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Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
1. What recent assessment she has made of the level of youth unemployment in Wales; and if she will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
The latest youth unemployment figures for Wales are disappointing, and I am sure that there is still much for us to do to ensure that the recession does not leave a legacy of workless young people. We will ensure that young unemployed people get the personalised help that they need to find full-time permanent jobs. As part of our reform of the welfare system, we are introducing a number of measures to support young people in finding employment.
Chris Ruane
Forty-six per cent. of the workers in my constituency, and 45% of the workers in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, work in the public sector. The Government want to sack up to 25% of those workers: the theory is that they will be employed by the private sector. Given today’s huge increases in unemployment, where are the jobs going to come from for those public sector workers?
Mr Jones
The hon. Gentleman will know that this Government inherited the most appalling economic legacy from the Labour party. That party seems to think that there is a bottomless purse to fund public sector jobs, irrespective of the economic state of the country. However, I am sure he will pleased to know that in his constituency there are, according to the latest figures, 273 vacancies, and I suggest that he encourage his constituents to seek those places.
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend aware of the reports from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Prince’s Trust, which make it clear that the fivefold increase in youth unemployment in Wales is the legacy left to this Government by those on the Labour Benches? Given that context, and bearing in mind the Prince’s Trust’s success in getting 75% of young people into employment, work or training, will he commit the Government to working closely with the Prince’s Trust and involving it closely in the Work programme?
Mr Jones
Like my hon. Friend, I commend the work of the Prince’s Trust, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already had meetings with its representatives. I also remind the House that the Welsh Government have a significant role to play. They are in charge of economic development and are responsible for training, which is key to reducing youth unemployment.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Is cutting the benefits for young people in order to encourage them to search for non-existent jobs not just a cruel mockery of their misfortune?
Mr Jones
I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that the Work programme, which this Government brought in, has introduced a level of tailored support for young people and others seeking work. The most important thing for people in the position of those he mentions is to regain work as quickly as possible.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
The Minister will be aware of the excellent work on youth training undertaken by Ceredigion Training in my constituency, which equips young people with the skills they need to gain work. Does he therefore share my concern that the Welsh Assembly Government have cut the work-based learning grant to Ceredigion Training, which means fewer apprenticeships and fewer opportunities for young people to get back into work?
Mr Jones
As my hon. Friend points out, the issue of economic development is firmly in the hands of the Welsh Assembly Government, as indeed is training. That is entirely a matter for them, but I am bound to say that, given the current economic backdrop, I was surprised that the economic development budget was cut last week.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
One of the flagship Government policies that was meant to help the private sector to grow in Wales was the national insurance holiday. That was meant to improve the prospects of 45,000 companies in Wales, but it has actually supported just 300—less than 0.7% of them. Will the Minister tell the Chancellor that it is not working in Wales and that he really needs to pull his finger out and help the 16,000 people who have found themselves on the dole as a result of this Government?
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
2. What discussions she has had with her ministerial colleagues on inward investment in Wales.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mrs Cheryl Gillan)
I am keen to attract more inward investment to Wales, as that is crucial to the recovery of the Welsh economy. I am working closely with ministerial colleagues, the Welsh Government and business to create an environment where companies choose to come to invest. One of our best adverts for Wales is our fantastic Welsh rugby team, and we all wish them well for their game at the weekend. They are a powerful advert for inward investment in Wales.
John Howell
Inward investment can be materially helped through enterprise zones. Does my right hon. Friend therefore regret the Welsh Administration’s delay of six months in making a decision on enterprise zones?
Mrs Gillan
My hon. Friend is right, and echoes what I have said on many occasions. I work as closely as I can with the Welsh Government and I encouraged them to introduce enterprise zones, but we had six months of wasted opportunities. There is every indication that the enterprise zones might look similar to those that have been announced across the border in England. Two tranches have been announced in England and just the one in Wales, but I am delighted that the Welsh Government have finally announced enterprise zones for Welsh businesses.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is right to mention the Welsh rugby team and the way that it can highlight Wales. When the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom comes in and sits next to her later, for Prime Minister’s questions, will she ask him to put the Welsh flag up over No. 10 Downing street this weekend, as he did with the cross of St George for the England football team during the World cup? [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Hon. Members wish to hear the Secretary of State’s reply to this probing question.
Mrs Gillan
I can heartily endorse that recommendation. Whether the powers that be will be able to fly that flag I do not know, so I cannot give him that guarantee, but it will be flying proudly above Gwydyr house.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
When I meet businesses in Wales, I am always impressed by the resilience they are showing during these difficult times. One issue that they always raise with me is that of business rates. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Assembly to build on the excellent work that local authorities are doing to reduce the burden of business rates to companies that wish to expand?
Mrs Gillan
As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is a matter for the Welsh Government, but I think the Welsh Government must carefully consider the conditions on the other side of the border in England, and ensure that inward investing companies and other companies in Wales are not disadvantaged in terms of taxation or non-tariff barriers. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to make his representations to the Welsh Government himself; I am sure that they will be interested in what he has to say.
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
As the Secretary of State will be aware, at least two coal mines in south Wales, Aberpergwm and Unity, have been in receipt of inward investment that is growing their employment and output. May I thank both mines for voluntarily helping to resource the rescue and investigation work following the terrible tragedy at the Gleision mine in the Swansea valley that caused the death of four experienced colliers, my constituents Charles Breslin, Philip Hill, Garry Jenkins and David Powell? May I also thank the Secretary of State for her support over this tragedy, which has included ensuring that the Government have agreed to provide the 25% uplift—equivalent to the charitable gift aid that could have been claimable—to the total raised by the Swansea Valley miners appeal fund, which is now rising towards £400,000, which shows an extraordinary and heartfelt public response? May I also thank the mines rescue service, the principal inspector of mines and the South Wales police for their dedicated and at times heroic work at Gleision?
Mrs Gillan
Like the right hon. Gentleman, I pay tribute to those who so valiantly led the rescue efforts in the immediate aftermath of last month’s tragedy at the Gleision mine, and I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for his work in his constituency. He and I saw those efforts at first hand, and I know the impact that that event will have had on his local community. As the shadow Secretary of State says, I have agreed that the Government will contribute to the Swansea Valley miners appeal fund to cover the amount that the fund would have been able to claim back as gift aid while its application for charitable status was being processed. I am pleased to say that charitable status has now been secured, and we in the Wales Office are working with the fund organisers on the details of the Government payment.
Mr Hain
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that. I believe that there are a number of important lessons from the Gleision tragedy for the future of mines safety and rescue. Will she therefore ensure that the Government delays the report of Professor Lofstedt, due by the end of this month, on regulations covering mining, among other sectors, so that account can be taken of a submission that I plan for her and her Cabinet colleagues?
Mrs Gillan
I understand that Professor Lofstedt is conducting an independent review of the overall regulatory framework covering health and safety legislation and its effectiveness. He issued a call for evidence in May and is now in the process of writing up his report. As this is an independent review, it would not be appropriate for my right hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for employment or the Government to intervene in the timing of the report. However, I am sure that any lessons that can be learned from the investigation into the tragic events at the Gleision mine will be incorporated into any recommendations from Professor Lofstedt’s report that are taken forward by the Health and Safety Executive. I look forward to receiving the right hon. Gentleman’s submission on this subject.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
3. What recent discussions she has had with her ministerial colleagues and others on job creation in the private sector in Wales.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
4. What recent discussions she has had with her ministerial colleagues and others on job creation in the private sector in Wales.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mrs Cheryl Gillan)
I have regular discussions with ministerial colleagues and other interested parties on ways in which we can stimulate job creation in the private sector in Wales. We must create an environment in which the private sector can grow and prosper in order for businesses to create much-needed jobs in Wales, and we will continue to work with the Welsh Government to achieve that aim.
Neil Parish
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Will she look at the Bristol channel and the Severn, where there is the second highest rise and fall in tide in the world? A great deal of power could be produced there and a great number of jobs could be created to harness that power through tidal pools. May I ask her what we are doing about that?
Mrs Gillan
I think my hon. Friend knows that we have looked at this, and we do not intend to review the Severn tidal power situation before 2015—but it would be irresponsible to rule out such an important source of renewable energy for ever, as circumstances are likely to change down the line. As I have said before, to the shadow Secretary of State for Wales, if private funding for this project comes forward, we will consider it particularly seriously.
Mel Stride
As my right hon. Friend will know, under the previous Government there was far too much onerous employment legislation, much of which served simply as a brake on the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises both in Wales and throughout the United Kingdom. Does she therefore welcome, as I do, the fact that the Government will be doubling the period to qualify to go to an unfair dismissal tribunal, and that fees will also be charged thereafter to stop—
Mrs Gillan
I think my hon. Friend knows that we are trying very hard to create the right conditions to encourage private sector growth, and particularly to make life easier for SMEs. He will know that we are also exempting them from audit requirements that will save SMEs in the UK up to £200 million a year. It is particularly important that we are exempting micro-businesses and start-ups from new domestic regulation until 2014. The point that he has raised is just another way in which we are trying to help private business to grow in the UK.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
A Sheffield Hallam university report published over the summer estimated that 30,000 people in Wales could lose their incapacity benefit as a result of the Government’s welfare changes, and could therefore be looking for work. How optimistic is the Secretary of State that the private sector will be able to create that level of employment?
Mrs Gillan
The hon. Lady makes a valid point. I know that the labour market statistics today have not brought good news, but I am pleased to report that there are 90,000 vacancies across the UK at the moment, including 12,638 in Wales. With the excellent job that is being carried out by Working Links and Jobcentre Plus, there are going to be many opportunities for people to find their way into work.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
This morning we have seen a shocking increase in unemployment, with 16,000 more people in Wales desperate to find work—a massive 13.5% increase over the past three months—as a direct result of this Government’s policies. Given this huge rise in unemployment, plus the squeeze on household incomes in Wales as a result of the Government’s increase in VAT, the reduction in the real purchasing power of pensions and the cruel slashing of the winter fuel allowance at a time of rocketing energy and food prices, can the Secretary of State explain how her Government’s policies will stimulate consumer demand in Wales and get growth going? How on earth will they stem the spate of high street shop closures and put some sparkle back into—
Mr Speaker
I think we have got the thrust of it; we are grateful to the hon. Lady.
Mrs Gillan
May I extend a warm welcome to the hon. Lady, who is now on the Front Bench? She and I have had many conversations, and I wish her well. I am sure that she will complement the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) in her new role, and the Under-Secretary and I would like to extend our good wishes to her.
I take no joy from the figures this morning, but I do take joy from the fact that we have announced sector-based work academies. I hope that the hon. Lady will use her good offices with her party, and explain why the Labour party and the Welsh Government are cutting the enterprise budget, rather than using the money to freeze council tax in Wales, as it is being frozen in England.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
5. What assessment she has made of the effects of the Government’s economic policy on employment levels in Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
Through our economic policies, we are committed to delivering strong and sustainable growth balanced across the whole UK, including Wales, rather than concentrated in London and the south-east, as it was under the previous Government. We have made it clear that our top priority remains tackling the deficit while creating the right conditions for the private sector to expand in Wales and create jobs.
Albert Owen
I welcome measures taken by the Welsh Government to stimulate the economy in Wales, but the UK Government, at a time of high unemployment, high inflation and rising borrowing, have taken money out of the economy by putting up VAT. Does the Minister agree with the Federation of Small Businesses that it is time to consider a temporary reduction in VAT to stimulate the economy, particularly in sectors such as construction and tourism, to increase employment in Wales?
Mr Jones
Those are matters that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor keeps under constant review, but I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not appear to regret, as I do, that the Welsh Assembly Government have decided to cut their economic development budget at this difficult time.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
Does the Minister accept that enterprise zones could create private sector employment in some of the most needy parts of Wales? Does he not think that the Welsh Government’s approach has been somewhat disjointed at best? Some prosperous parts have become enterprise zones, but some of the most needy parts, such as Barry in my constituency, have not.
Mr Speaker
May I remind the Minister that he is not responsible for the Welsh Assembly Government, so a pithy reply would be in order?
Mr David Jones
In all pithiness, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) that enterprise zones are key to economic development, and I regret that the Welsh Assembly Government have still not clarified their intentions in that regard.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Lloyds TSB’s Wales business activity index for September reported the sharpest decrease in private sector employment for 27 months. What specific countervailing measures is the Minister arguing for with the Treasury to give the Welsh economy a competitive edge?
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
6. What recent discussions she has had on promoting economic growth in Wales.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mrs Cheryl Gillan)
I have regular discussions with ministerial colleagues, the Welsh Government and other organisations on promoting economic growth in Wales. My business advisory group is meeting for the fourth time later this month. We discuss a wide range of issues affecting the Welsh economy, and that is fed into the Prime Minister’s own business advisory group.
Julian Smith
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Does she agree that as well as exempting small businesses in Wales and the rest of the UK from domestic regulation, the Government must continue their radical approach to reducing red tape and regulation from Brussels?
Mrs Gillan
I agree with my hon. Friend. It is extremely important in this day and age, when we are up against such huge economic barriers, that we ensure that it is easy for businesses to start up and thrive in the UK, so that the UK becomes the best place to do business.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State update the House on how the Wales Office is supporting economic growth in the newly announced enterprise zones, and will she meet representatives of my council, possible employers and me to talk about that? In Blaenau Gwent in the past 12 months, unemployment has gone up by a shocking 11.7%.
Mrs Gillan
I need to remind the hon. Gentleman that the enterprise zones in Wales are a devolved matter that falls to the Welsh Government. I would ask him to make his representations, as I did on his behalf and on behalf of many other Members of the House, to the Minister for Business, Enterprise, Technology and Science in Wales. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what we are doing. We are increasing capital spending on roads and railways, creating a superfast broadband network, and cutting corporation tax and regulation. We are doing an awful lot to support businesses, and I want the Welsh Government to rise to the challenge, too. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There are far too many noisy private conversations taking place in the Chamber. I want to hear both the questions and the answers.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
7. If she will assess the effects of changes to the feed-in tariff scheme on the solar industry in Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
We will consult on proposed changes to the feed-in tariff scheme, and will produce an impact assessment setting out the effects across the UK in the autumn. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have spoken to a number of businesses across the UK and understand their concerns in this regard.
Ian Lucas
Labour’s feed-in tariff created 300 jobs in my constituency. The Tories have increased unemployment in Wrexham in the past six months by 12.6%. Why are they reversing the successful Labour policy that is creating private sector jobs, when they are supposed to be favouring jobs and growth?
Mr Jones
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that Sharp is an extremely important employer in his constituency. He will be aware that the feed-in tariff scheme favoured large-scale solar farms, not the domestic installations, but I hope—indeed, I am sure—that he will welcome the announcement last month that Sharp has secured a multi-million-pound contract with Wrexham county borough council to install solar panels in 3,000 local authority homes.
Jenny Willott (Cardiff Central) (LD)
The solar technology industry is just one of the growing green technology industries that could be vital to boosting job creation in Wales. Does the Minister agree that strong Government support for those industries will not put the country out of business, but will stimulate investment in this area and help the Welsh economy to recover?
Mr Speaker
Order. It is still far too noisy. I know the House will be united in wanting to hear Mr Peter Bone.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
8. What progress has been made on establishing a commission on devolution and funding in Wales; and if she will make a statement.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
10. What recent representations she has received on the proposed Calman-style commission for Wales; and if she will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mrs Cheryl Gillan)
Yesterday I announced in a written ministerial statement to the House the terms of reference and membership of the commission on devolution in Wales, the Silk commission. The commission will review the present financial and constitutional arrangements in Wales. It will look first at the financial accountability of the National Assembly for Wales and the Welsh Government and will aim to report in the autumn of next year. Following that, the commission will examine the current constitutional arrangements and will report in 2013.
Mrs Gillan
Mrs Bone, I am sure, is absolutely right when she says that the economy of this country was left in a complete mess by that lot over there on the Opposition Benches—but my hon. Friend has asked a fairly complex question about the Barnett formula. The Barnett formula is not being examined by the Silk commission; it is the subject of bilateral communications involving the Treasury and the devolved Administration Governments, because it is a matter that concerns the whole of the UK. The Silk commission is focused on matters affecting Wales directly.
Mr Llwyd
I very much welcome yesterday’s announcement on the commission on devolution in Wales. That was a commitment of the coalition Government in Wales. Why are the Holtham recommendations specifically not being considered by the commission? If all those recommendations are going to be dismissed there will be difficulty in ensuring cross-party support, which is very important for the commission.
Mrs Gillan
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to correct him, because I think he has misunderstood the terms of reference, which were agreed across all four parties. I am delighted to see his party taking part in the work of the Silk commission. What the Silk commission will be looking at is the second part of the Holtham report, which I know the First Minister is not keen on because it is about taxation powers. What is excluded is merely the Barnett formula and something called the “Holtham floor”, which is part of the subject of the bilateral communications. May I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that I want to move forward, if I can, on the basis of consensus? I am delighted that his party has worked with me on the commission so far.
Mrs Gillan
The right hon. Gentleman has enough experience of legislation in this House to know that that is not something I can commit to, but let me tell him that the report will come in two parts. The first report will, we hope, come at the end of 2012, and the later report on the shape of powers between the UK Government and the Welsh Government will come towards the end of 2013. I will bear in mind what he has said.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 12 October.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in paying tribute to Lance Corporal Jonathan McKinlay from 1st Battalion the Rifles and Marine David Fairbrother from Kilo Company 42 Commando Royal Marines. They were both extremely committed and courageous servicemen who have given their lives in the service of our country. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies should be with their families, friends and colleagues.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Sir Alan Beith
The whole House will want to endorse the Prime Minister’s words about our heroic service personnel and their families, and I think that most of us also want to see the earliest possible withdrawal of our combat troops from Afghanistan.
What will the Prime Minister do about that group of women already in their late 50s who have seen their state pension age rise from 60 to 64 and now face a further two-year increase from 64 to 66? The coalition had to reform the pension system and will be fairer to women, but this anomaly needs addressing.
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is right to identify that it is of course right to equalise men and women’s state pension ages. That has been a long-term goal shared across the House of Commons. I also think that it is right to raise the retirement age to 66, as we have done. We know that a large group of people are affected by this transition and that some people will potentially have to work for an extra two years. We are looking at what transitional help we can give to this group of people and will make an announcement shortly.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
I join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to Lance Corporal Jonathan McKinlay from 1st Battalion the Rifles and Marine David Fairbrother from Kilo Company 42 Commando Royal Marines. They were exceptionally courageous men who died serving their country and our deepest condolences go to their family and friends.
A year ago, during our exchanges, the Prime Minister justified his economic policy by saying that unemployment would fall this year, next year and the year after. Given that unemployment has risen by 114,000, is it not time he admitted that his plan is not working?
The Prime Minister
First of all, these are very disappointing figures that have been announced today and every job that is lost is a tragedy for the person concerned and their family. That is why this Government will do everything we possibly can to help get people into work. That is why we have the Work programme, the biggest back-to-work programme since the 1930s, which will help 2.5 million people. That is why we have welfare reform to make sure that it always pays for people to be in work. That is why we are reforming our schools, including raising the participation age to 18 so that we end the scandal of 16 and 17-year-olds left on the dole, and that is why we have a record number of apprenticeships—360,000 this year. I accept that we have to do more to get our economy moving and get jobs for our people, but we must not abandon the plan that has given us record low interest rates.
Edward Miliband
We hear the same script month after month. It is not working. Does the Prime Minister not realise that today’s figures show that it is not working? It is his failure that means today in Britain we have nearly 1 million young people out of work. Why does he not accept some responsibility for doing something about it?
The Prime Minister
I accept responsibility for everything that happens in our economy, but I just sometimes wish that people who were in government for 13 years accepted some responsibility for the mess they made. This Government have pledged to do everything we can to get our economy moving. That is why we have cut petrol tax and corporation tax, why we are reforming the planning system, why we introduced the regional growth fund, why we are forcing the banks to lend money and why we have created 22 enterprise zones. I know what the right hon. Gentleman wants: he wants us to change course on reducing our deficit. If we changed course on reducing our deficit, we would end up with interest rates like those in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece and we would send our economy into a tailspin.
Edward Miliband
I want the Prime Minister to change course so that he has a credible plan to get people back to work in this country. What he does not seem to understand is that month after month, as unemployment goes up and the number of people claiming benefit goes up, the costs go up and fewer people are in work and paying taxes. To have a credible plan on the deficit, you need a credible plan for growth, and he does not have one. It is not just young people who are suffering. Can the Prime Minister tell us when was the last time that unemployment among women reached the levels it has today?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is wrong on his figures. There are 50,000 more women in work than there were at the time of the election, there are 239,000 more people in work than at the time of the election, and there are 500,000 more private sector jobs. He specifically asks about a credible growth plan. I would ask, where is his credible growth plan? Why is it that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer said this:
“If you don’t have a credible economic policy, you are simply not at the races”?
Why is it—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Whatever people think of what is being said on either side of the House, they must not shout their heads off. The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition will be heard, and that is the end of it.
The Prime Minister
The fact is that our plan is supported by the CBI, by the Institute of Directors, by the business organisations, by the IMF, and by the OECD. The right hon. Gentleman cannot even get support from his own former Cabinet Ministers. The former Home Secretary says this:
“I think the economic proposition that Labour puts at the moment is unconvincing.”
If the right hon. Gentleman cannot convince his own party, how can he convince the country?
Edward Miliband
The Conservative Chair of the Prime Minister’s Select Committee says that his policies on growth are “inconsistent” and “incoherent”. He obviously cannot convince him, can he?
Of course, typically, the Prime Minister did not answer the question on women’s unemployment, so let me tell him: women’s unemployment is at its highest since 1988—the last time there was a Conservative Government in power. I have to say that instead of apologising four months late to my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) for saying, “Calm down, dear”, he should be apologising to the women of this country for what he is doing to our economy.
Let me ask the Prime Minister another question that maybe this time he will answer. Last year, in his Budget, the Chancellor announced a flagship policy on growth. He said that the national insurance holiday for start-up firms would help 400,000 businesses. Can the Prime Minister tell the House how many businesses have actually taken part?
The Prime Minister
Seven thousand.
On the issue of women in work, of course I want to see more women in work, and there are 50,000 more women in work than at the time of the last election. It is this Government who have introduced free child care for all vulnerable two-year-olds, who have extended child care for three and four-year-olds, who have increased the child tax credit by £290, and who, for the first time, have announced that we will be giving child care to all people working fewer than 16 hours, helping hundreds of thousands of women and families out of poverty into work and into a better life. That is what we are doing.
The question the right hon. Gentleman must address is the big picture, which is this: he cannot convince the former Home Secretary, the former Trade Minister or the former Chancellor that he has got any idea of what to do with the economy. The reason is that if we adopted his plan, we would not be working with the IMF to sort out the eurozone—we would be going to the IMF to ask for a loan.
Edward Miliband
In case the Prime Minister has not realised, when the Chancellor says that 400,000 firms will benefit and only 7,000 are, that should tell him something: it should tell him that his policies are not working. That policy is not working; his plan is not working. Why does he not, just for once, agree with us: cut VAT and put more money into people’s pockets, help the construction industry to get moving, and invest in getting young people back to work by having a bankers’ bonus tax?
The Prime Minister
When is the Labour party going to learn that one cannot borrow one’s way out of a debt crisis? It left us the biggest deficit, the most leveraged banks and the most indebted households, and what is its answer? It is to borrow more money. Is it any wonder that the former Trade and Investment Minister, Digby Jones, described the Labour leader’s conference speech as
“divisive and a kick in the teeth for the only sector that generates wealth that pays the tax and creates the jobs this country needs.”?
That is what a former Labour Minister said about a Labour policy. That is why the Labour leader has no credibility whatsoever.
Edward Miliband
What a terrible answer. I will take on the companies in this country that are not doing the right thing, such as the energy companies. We are seeing change in the energy sector today because of what I said.
On the day of the worst unemployment figures in 17 years, the Prime Minister is fighting to save the job of the Defence Secretary, but doing nothing to save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of people up and down this country. There is one rule for the Cabinet and another rule for everyone else.
The Prime Minister
The previous Labour leader thought that he had saved the world; after that answer, I think that this Labour leader is Walter Mitty. The Labour party has to accept some responsibility for the mess it made of the economy. It is the party that borrowed too much, spent too much, left us with unregulated banks and left us with the mess that we have to clear up. When one sees those two sitting on the Front Bench who worked for so long in the Treasury, one has to ask, one would not bring back Fred Goodwin to sort out the banks, so why would one bring them back to sort out the economy?
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
Has my right hon. Friend noticed that since I put the point to him last month, the head of our Serious Fraud Office, Mr Richard Alderman, has publicly deplored the fact that no senior British bankers have been prosecuted for their irresponsibility, and has urged that legislation be introduced as soon as possible to empower his office to prosecute such offenders?
The Prime Minister
It is important that inquiries are conducted into what went wrong at RBS and HBOS, because we are left clearing up a mess made by the irresponsibility of others. If there is room for criminal prosecutions, of course those should happen. Our responsibility is to ensure that we regulate the banks and the financial industry properly in future. That is why we have put the Bank of England back at the heart of the job.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
Q2. Will the Prime Minister publish a full list of all the Ministers and Downing street staff who, since May 2010, have met Mr Adam Werritty in an official or social capacity, including whether he as Prime Minister has met him?
Lorraine Fullbrook (South Ribble) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that in the light of the difficult times encountered by some of my constituents in South Ribble who work for BAE, it is even more important that this Government continue their excellent support for exports and their continued investment in the development of the Typhoon and new unmanned aerial vehicle systems?
The Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend. Obviously, the position at BAE has been of concern. That is why we immediately put in place plans for an enterprise zone on each side of the Pennines to help with that important business. BAE is a great British company. It has a huge forward order book, not least because of our defence budget, through which we are investing in Typhoons, aircraft carriers and unmanned aerial drones. I will do everything I can to support that company, including promoting its exports abroad. I have had conversations with the Japanese and will soon be talking to the Saudi Arabians and others to do all that we can do to make sure that this great British company goes on being a great British success.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Q3. Imperial Healthcare Trust, which offers outstanding clinical care and research in three major hospitals in west London, is being forced to make 5% per annum cuts for five years, so that is 25% of its £900 million a year budget. How does that fulfil the Prime Minister’s promise not to cut health services to my constituents?
The Prime Minister
We are increasing NHS spending throughout this Parliament, and, I have to say, that is a complete contrast with the Opposition’s policy. They now have a new health spokesman. I was worried that I would not have the same quantity of quotes from the new health spokesman, but he has not disappointed. He said this—very clear, very plain:
“It is irresponsible to increase NHS spending in real terms”.
That is Labour’s position—that it is irresponsible to increase health spending. We disagree.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
Q4. Too many children in Britain today live in families that do not provide them with the loving and stable environment that they deserve, and that has led to many of our most pressing social problems. Would the Prime Minister agree that this Government need to do all they can to help some of Britain’s most problem families?
The Prime Minister
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. If we look at the evidence, we see that some of the most troubled families in our country get a huge number of interventions from the police, social services, education and the rest of it, but no one is really getting in there to help turn those families around, change what they do and give them a better chance. So we are establishing a new unit under the leadership of Louise Casey, who I think has been a superb official over the past decade, and we are going to be putting huge resources into turning around the 120,000 most troubled families in our country. I think we can make a huge difference for those families, and we can reduce the burden that they place on the taxpayer at the same time.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
Will the Prime Minister instruct our ambassador in Kiev to make representations on behalf of the Government and Parliament about the appalling show trial and prison sentence handed down to Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Prime Minister? Prime Ministers do make mistakes and lose elections, as she did, but she has been put on trial for policy decisions that she took. Will the Prime Minister make it clear—I am glad the Foreign Secretary is briefing him—that Ukraine will not be able to open membership talks with the EU, and that any hopes of liberalising visa access will go out of the window because of this disgraceful Stalinist show trial and sentence?
The Prime Minister
We completely agree that the treatment of Mrs Tymoshenko, whom I have met on previous occasions, is absolutely disgraceful. The Foreign Secretary has made a very strong statement about this. The Ukrainians need to know that if they leave the situation as it is, it will severely affect their relationship not only with the UK but with the European Union and NATO.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
Q5. Small business, not more Government debt, is key to job creation, and entrepreneurship is a noble endeavour, so will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming the support of Bedfordshire university, Cranfield university, Colworth science park, Bedfordshire on Sunday and 100 business leaders in my constituency for setting up an investment fund and mentoring scheme to support early-stage businesses in Bedford? Will he ask his Ministers to work with me to see whether that can be replicated in other towns across the country?
The Prime Minister
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for what he is doing in Bedford. This Government recognise that it is going to be small businesses that will provide the growth, jobs and wealth that this country needs. That is why we have an agreement with the banks to increase lending to small businesses, why we are providing extra rate relief to small businesses, why we are giving the smallest businesses a holiday from new regulation and why we have got the one-in, one-out rule for new regulation. I applaud all efforts at a local level to give small businesses the mentoring, help and support that they need to grow.
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
Q6. Responding to the Science and Technology Committee’s report on forensic science, a Home Office Minister has said:“We don’t agree with the committee’s report. It mis-states a number of very significant points.”Given that the Home Office’s financial case was 50% adrift, and that it has now agreed with our argument that the national archive should be protected, will the Prime Minister urgently intervene and review the decision to close the Forensic Science Service? The country and the profession are now losing key scientific staff.
The Prime Minister
I will certainly look at what the hon. Gentleman says, but I looked at that decision in some detail at the time, having known well the Forensic Science Service from when I worked at the Home Office many years ago. The evidence was pretty overwhelming that the model was not working and that change was needed. That is what has happened. Sometimes it is better to make that change rather than endlessly review it.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
The Prime Minister inherited a welfare system in which families were able to claim £2,000 a week in housing benefit, and in which some working families were worse off than those who were on benefits. What can he do to help those hard-working families in Sherwood who get out of bed and work hard because of their self-pride and responsibility?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend speaks for millions in the country when he says that what people want is a welfare system that helps people who want to put in, work hard and do the right thing. What we are doing, first, is putting in place a cap so that we do not have those absurd amounts of money in housing benefit going to individual families—as he says, sometimes, it is £2,000 a week. Secondly, universal credit will ensure that it is always worth while people working and always worth while working a little harder. Let us see whether the Labour party, after a decade of giving people something for nothing, are prepared to back that by voting for the tough caps in the Welfare Reform Bill.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
Q7. If a Minister breaks the ministerial code, should he or she keep their job?
The Prime Minister
The ministerial code is very clear that, in the end, it is for the Prime Minister to decide whether someone keeps their job or not. In the case of the Defence Secretary, when the Leader of the Opposition has called for an inquiry by the Cabinet Secretary, and when I have established such an inquiry, it is very important that we allow him to do his work to establish facts, and then a decision can be made. However, let me be clear: I think that the Defence Secretary has done an excellent job clearing up the complete mess that he was left by Labour.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
Retirement ages must go up, but the timetable in the Pensions Bill is too fast for many women. I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister say earlier that he was looking at transitional arrangements, and I would hope that those will result in a significant slowing down of the increase in retirement age for many women.
The Prime Minister
As I have said, we have looked at this issue very carefully and we will be making an announcement shortly. We have to look at the most difficult cases of people who will have to do quite an extra amount of working time, but clearly it is right—one must look at the big picture—to equalise men’s and women’s pension arrangements, and to move to 66, given the extra longevity that we enjoy as a country. Given that, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be pleased when the announcement is made.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
Q8. Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are on record as supporting gender equality for future royal successions. Will the Prime Minister update the House on the consultation that he and the Deputy Prime Minister are having with other Commonwealth leaders on this issue? Does he agree that it is better that we resolve this matter before rather than after any future royal children are born?
The Prime Minister
I certainly believe that this issue should be sorted out—I am on the record as believing that, and I am sure that across the House there will be widespread support for it. In the consultation, I have written to the Heads of State and Prime Ministers of the other realms concerned, and we will have a meeting on the matter at the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference. This is not an easy issue to sort out. Many may have worries about starting a parliamentary or other legal process, but I am very clear that it is an issue that we ought to get sorted, and I would be delighted to play a part in doing that.
Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree with the recent advice from the shadow Treasury Minister, who said that we must not and cannot pick good winners and losers? To conceive of such a simplistic “sinners and winners” model shows a distinct misunderstanding of business?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The greatest need in our economy right now is to generate wealth, jobs and investment. What did Labour do at its conference? It just launched a big attack on British business, when that is what will help us out of these difficulties.
Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
Q9. Was the Prime Minister aware before today that his chief spokeswoman was a former colleague of Mr Adam Werritty?
The Prime Minister
As I have said, this whole issue is being looked at by the Cabinet Secretary, and he will produce his report. I would ask people to have a little patience—let the facts be established and the questions answered, and then we can move ahead.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that nearly 40 Government Members have signed an amendment in my name requiring that all offenders convicted of using a knife in a threatening or endangering fashion will receive a custodial sentence, not only those over 18? Will he consider supporting this amendment?
The Prime Minister
I shall certainly look closely at what my hon. Friend says. I know that the Justice Secretary is doing this too. We want to move ahead with a mandatory sentence for adults, and we shall look very closely at the arguments that my hon. Friend makes.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
Q10. Sir John Major said four days ago that the Government should use the euro crisis as an opportunity to loosen EU powers over Britain. His first priority was the common fisheries policy. When will the Prime Minister take Sir John’s advice and tell the EU that Britain intends to withdraw from the CFP?
The Prime Minister
I always listen carefully to Sir John’s advice, and he gives me some excellent advice. In the short term, Britain desperately needs to get behind the solution to the eurozone crisis, because it is having a chilling effect on the whole of the European economy, and the American economy as well. That is the first priority. I accept, however, that at the same time as doing that it will be important to get some safeguards for Britain. As eurozone countries go ahead and sort out their problems, we need safeguards to ensure that the single market goes on working for the United Kingdom.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Last weekend, B&Q opened a new store in Pembroke Dock creating 25 jobs and Ledwood engineering advertised 25 new jobs in the town. Jobcentre Plus in Pembroke Dock has 249 jobs on offer. Does the Prime Minister agree that there would be further good news if the banks honoured their pledge to commit to credit flow, and will he keep the pressure on and encourage businesses in Wales to advertise even more jobs?
The Prime Minister
We shall certainly keep the pressure on the banks. It is worth making the point that in spite of the difficulties, there are 500,000 new private sector jobs in our economy compared with the time of the election. However, we need to have in place all the things that help businesses to expand and grow. Bank finance is just one of those things. We have the Merlin agreement, which is increasing lending to small businesses, and we also have what the Chancellor has said about credit easing to ensure that we consider other ways of expanding credit in our economy.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
Q11. This week, I had the privilege of meeting Hafsah Ali and Joseph Hayat from the Ready for Work campaign. They are impressive young people campaigning against rising youth unemployment. Will the Prime Minister tell us what has happened to his vow earlier this year to reverse the trend of rising youth unemployment? Will he also tell the House when he last met a young unemployed person?
The Prime Minister
Youth unemployment has been rising since 2004—it went up during the growth years as well as in the difficult years. We need a comprehensive strategy that deals with all the problems of youth unemployment, including the fact that there are too many people leaving school aged 16 who spent 13 years under a Labour Education Secretary—so the Labour party needs to take some responsibility—and who left school without qualifications to help them get a job. This is about ensuring that we have better education, a welfare system that helps people into work and a Work programme that provides not phoney jobs, as the future jobs fund did, but real work for real young people.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
A recent TaxPayers Alliance report revealed—[Hon. Members: “Ahh!”]—that 38 union leaders were remunerated at more than £100,000 each, including Derek Simpson of Unite, who received more than £500,000. Does the Prime Minister agree that it is time for union boss pay restraint?
The Prime Minister
It is interesting that Labour Members always listen to the trade unions, but never to the TaxPayers Alliance. One reason is that they do not want to hear about excessive pay in the public sector, local government or among their paymasters, the trade unions.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Here is another question that the Prime Minister will not want to answer. Will he get a grip of his Back Benchers following last night’s debacle in the Chamber relating to the business of the House on 17 October? Does he understand that the perception out there in the real world is that some MPs would rather talk about their own pensions than discuss a 22-year-old injustice and the deaths of 96 men, women and children?
The Prime Minister
Let me answer the hon. Gentleman directly. We are going to protect the time for that absolutely vital debate. On the issue of MPs’ pensions, it is very clear that we have to show restraint at a time when the rest of the public sector is being asked to show restraint. So because of what happened last night, there will have to be a debate, but it will not eat into the time for the very important debate that he mentioned and which I know many Members care deeply about.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
What action is my right hon. Friend taking to reintroduce rigour into the education system and end the ridiculous situation under the previous Government of 22% of students doing proper academic studies?
The Prime Minister
The Education Secretary is doing a superb job of focusing schools on results, including in English and maths, ensuring that we look at the English baccalaureate, which includes the core subjects that employers and colleges really value, and doing some simple and straightforward things that were not done for 13 years, such as ensuring that punctuation and grammar actually count when someone does an exam.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
The Prime Minister met the Finucane family yesterday, so will he now reflect on the comments made by an Taoiseach in relation to that meeting and the outcomes, and the agreement made by both Governments at the Weston Park talks in 2001 that there should be an independent public inquiry?
The Prime Minister
Of course I have reflected incredibly carefully on what was said yesterday, and I have reflected on this whole issue for many months since becoming Prime Minister. I profoundly believe that the right thing for the Finucane family, for Northern Ireland and for everyone in the United Kingdom is not to have another costly and open-ended public inquiry, which may not find the answer, but instead for the British Government to do the really important thing, which is to open up and tell the truth about what happened 22 years ago. We do not need an inquiry to do that; that is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will be making a statement explaining exactly how we are going to do it and who will be involved. In the end, the greatest healer is the truth. Frank acknowledgement of what went wrong, an apology for what happened—that is what is required. Let us not have another Saville process to get there; let us get there more quickly and do the right thing.
Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the news that it seems that Gilad Shalit will be released in the next few days, which could well go a long way towards peace in the area?
The Prime Minister
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this case. What that young soldier has been through for those weeks, months and years is something that anyone in this House would find difficult to contemplate. If it is the case that he will be coming home soon, I wish him, his family and everyone in Israel well.
Mr Speaker
Order. The following statement is on an extremely important matter. May I appeal to right hon. and hon. Members who are leaving the Chamber to do so quickly and quietly, so that I and those remaining can hear the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland?
Pat Finucane
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Owen Paterson)
With permission, I would like to make a statement. Following my statement to the House last November in relation to the murder of Mr Patrick Finucane, I have considered this case very carefully. I want to set out today how the Government intend to proceed.
The murder of Mr Finucane, a Belfast solicitor, in front of his family on 12 February 1989 was a terrible crime. There have been long-standing allegations of security force collusion in his murder. The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens was asked to investigate the murder in 1999. He published his overview report in 2003, concluding that there was “collusion”, that the murder “could have been prevented” and that the original investigation of the murder
“should have resulted in the early arrest and detection of his killers.”
When he was asked by the previous Government to consider the question of a public inquiry, Judge Cory found in 2004
“strong evidence that collusive acts were committed by the Army…the RUC…and the Security Service.”
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister invited the family to Downing street yesterday so that he could apologise to them in person and on behalf of the Government for state collusion in the murder of Patrick Finucane.
The Government accept the clear conclusions of Lord Stevens and Judge Cory that there was collusion. I want to reiterate the Government’s apology in the House today. The Government are deeply sorry for what happened. Despite the clear conclusions of previous investigations and reports, there is still only limited information in the public domain. That is why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I have committed to establishing a further process to ensure that the truth is revealed. Accepting collusion is not sufficient in itself. The public now need to know the extent and nature of that collusion. I have, therefore, asked the distinguished former United Nations war crimes prosecutor Sir Desmond de Silva QC to conduct an independent review to produce a full public account of any state involvement in the murder.
Sir Desmond is an internationally respected QC who will carry out his work completely independently of Government. He has worked for the United Nations on major international issues in Serbia and Sierra Leone. In 2005, Kofi Annan appointed him to be chief prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In 2010, he was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to the independent fact-finding mission to investigate the Israeli interception of a Gaza aid flotilla. His track record in carrying out this work speaks for itself.
Sir Desmond’s terms of reference are to draw
“from the extensive investigations that have already taken place, to produce a full public account of any involvement by the Army, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Security Service or other UK Government body in the murder of Patrick Finucane. The review will have full access to the Stevens archive and all Government papers, including any Ministry of Defence, Security Service, Home Office, Cabinet Office or Northern Ireland Office files that”
Sir Desmond believes
“are relevant.”
The account will be provided to me
“by December 2012, for the purpose of its publication.”
I have agreed the terms of reference with Sir Desmond, and I would stress that he is being given unrestricted access to these documents. He will be free to meet any individuals who can assist him in his task. It is, of course, open to him to invite or consider submissions as he sees fit.
The review will have the full support and co-operation of all Government Departments and agencies in carrying out its work. I have spoken to the Chief Constable, who has given his assurance that Sir Desmond will have the full co-operation of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. This Government have demonstrated in the Bloody Sunday, Billy Wright and Rosemary Nelson cases that we will publish independent reports without delay. The same checking and publication arrangements will be put in place.
This has been an exceptionally long-running issue. The previous Government sought to resolve the issue after the 2004 commitment to hold an inquiry but were unable to reach an agreed way forward with the family. I am disappointed that the family did not feel able to support the process that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I outlined to them yesterday. I fully recognise that the family have pursued their long campaign to find out the truth with great determination. We do not need a statutory inquiry to tell us that there was collusion. We accept that, and my apology in the House today reflects this. The task now is to uncover the details of this murder. The public should not be kept waiting for many more years for the truth to be revealed.
The Government have taken a bold step by asking an internationally respected figure to produce a full public account. Details in papers and statements that have been kept secret for decades will finally be exposed. The House will be aware of the extensive investigations that have already taken place in this case. I am clear that we do not need to repeat all the work that Lord Stevens has already carried out for the truth to be revealed. The investigations into the murder of Patrick Finucane have produced a huge amount of material. One man, Kenneth Barrett, was prosecuted and convicted of the murder in 2004. Taken together, the Stevens investigations took 9,256 witness statements. The Stevens documentary archive extends to more than 1 million pages; 16,194 exhibits were seized. This was one of the largest police investigations in UK history.
Lord Stevens carried out a police investigation to bring forward evidence for prosecutions. A 19-page summary report was produced in 2003, but the Stevens investigation was not designed to provide a public account of what happened. That is why Sir Desmond de Silva will now have full access to the Stevens files and all Government papers to ensure that the full facts are finally set out. The House will not want to pre-empt the details of Sir Desmond’s report. When the report is published, the Government will not hide from the truth, however difficult.
I strongly believe that this will be the quickest and most effective way of getting to the truth. Experience has shown that public inquiries into the events of the troubles take many years and can be subject to prolonged litigation, which delays the truth emerging. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I have made clear for some time, we do not believe that more costly and open-ended inquiries are the right way to deal with Northern Ireland’s past.
I am acutely conscious that the conflict in Northern Ireland saw over 3,500 people from all parts of the community killed and tens of thousands more injured. We should never forget the many terrible atrocities that took place. More than 1,000 of those killed were members of the security forces. I want to be clear that the overwhelming majority of those who served in the security forces in Northern Ireland did so with outstanding courage, professionalism and even-handedness in upholding democracy and the rule of law. The whole House will agree that we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.
The murder of Patrick Finucane has been one of the longest-running and most contentious issues in Northern Ireland’s recent history. The appointment of an internationally respected and wholly independent figure to produce a full public account demonstrates the Government’s determination that the truth about this murder should be finally revealed. The House will recognise the spirit of openness and frankness with which we are dealing with this difficult issue. I would encourage everyone to judge the process we have established by its results. I commend this statement to the House.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
May I first thank the Secretary of State for early sight of his statement and for the welcome that he has on many occasions extended to me in my new post? I greatly appreciate it, as I do the welcome I have received from many others, too. I am delighted to have been appointed the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and I look forward to working in a bipartisan way with the Secretary of State whenever possible, as well as to working closely with the Northern Ireland Executive, and all their parties and representatives. I will, however, hold the Government to account and challenge them, where necessary.
Every community in Northern Ireland has suffered outrages, atrocities and murders, but today we are reflecting on the murder of Pat Finucane. His wife was wounded in the attack and his three children witnessed what no child ever should—the murder of their father.
Thirteen months ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Mr Woodward), to whom I pay tribute today for all the work he did in Northern Ireland, asked the Secretary of State to honour the commitments of a previous Prime Minister and previous Secretaries of State to hold an inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane. That commitment was made as a result of an agreement between the British and Irish Governments at Weston Park in 2001. If peace and reconciliation are to be taken forward, we need to respect such agreements. The progress that has been made in Northern Ireland is built on trust. As we have heard from Judge Cory’s report, public inquiries have been held into the cases of Robert Hamill, Rosemary Nelson and Billy Wright, but not into that of Pat Finucane.
It was a source of great regret to us, as the last Government, that we were not able to agree terms of reference with the Finucane family for an inquiry to take place under the Inquiries Act 2005, but today the Secretary of State has told us of his decision that there will no inquiry at all. Instead the Government have announced an inadequate review, although the whole country will welcome the apology. We are disappointed by that decision, and think that the Secretary of State should honour commitments that have been made.
The incredible scenes yesterday of the Finucane family at Downing street expressing their feelings of anger and outrage at having been completely let down by the Government show that this is no way in which to deal with such a difficult and sensitive issue. Will the Secretary of State tell us why he allowed the Finucane family to believe for so long that an inquiry would be offered to them? What discussions did he have with them before informing them of his decision? What advice did he give the Prime Minister that led the Prime Minister to invite the family to Downing street? They clearly believed that they would be offered something that would be acceptable to them; otherwise, why raise false hopes? What discussions had the Secretary of State had with his counterpart in the Irish Government before he made his decision?
Why, on the day on which the Irish Government extended by six months the Smithwick inquiry into the murders of Chief Superintendent Breen and Superintendent Buchanan regarding alleged Garda collusion, did the Secretary of State choose to deny an inquiry to the Finucane family? Does he accept that, while any form of inquiry takes time and carries a financial cost, it is possible for such inquiries to be both reasonable and not, in themselves, a barrier to the pursuit of justice? As for the proposed review of the Finucane papers, will he tell us how representations—including any from the family—can be made, what the expected cost of such a review will be, where the hearings will be held, whether any will be held in secret, and whether witnesses will be called?
Everything that has been achieved in Northern Ireland since the mid-1990s has been achieved with consensus. The Belfast, St Andrews and Hillsborough Castle agreements were all achieved by means of consensus. The Northern Ireland Executive operate by consensus. There are many horrors from the past, many atrocities, many outrages on the part of both loyalist and republican terrorists, but there is an opportunity for Northern Ireland to escape the grip of the past by confronting the truth about past events. Will the Secretary of State therefore tell us what the Government’s policy is for dealing with the past? Having denied a public inquiry into the death of Pat Finucane, will he tell us what additional resources he will provide for the Historical Enquiries Team?
The people of Northern Ireland have made real progress, but we must never take such progress for granted. It has taken real effort, commitment and trust. I agree with the Prime Minister: let us do the right thing. May I ask the Secretary of State to think again about an inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane because it is the right thing to do? Seeking the truth and honouring agreements means that the cause of justice is served, and with it the cause of a better future for Northern Ireland.
Mr Paterson
Let me begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) on his appointment to a difficult and important position. I warmly welcome his view that we should approach Northern Ireland issues in a bipartisan manner. He is sitting next to the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain). The right hon. Gentleman, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) and the right hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Mr Woodward)—who are also present—all played a distinguished part in bringing Northern Ireland to where it is now, continuing work which, in fairness, began under Sir John Major, whose role is often forgotten. I very much hope that we shall continue to work closely with one another. We met privately on Monday, and we have talked today. My door is always open, and I hope that we shall discuss these matters together.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the chronology. I wrote to the Finucane family within weeks—on 28 June last year—asking to meet them. I met Mrs Finucane in November last year, and I think I was the first Secretary of State to meet her since the right hon. Member for Neath met her in 2006. I said then that we had inherited an impasse. We entirely respected the position of the Labour Government, who had committed themselves to a public inquiry, but the right hon. Member for Torfaen had introduced the Inquiries Act 2005, and there appeared to be a jam. We wanted to unlock that jam, and we went into the process in a genuinely open-minded way.
On 11 November last year I issued a written ministerial statement, which the hon. Gentleman will have read, setting out various criteria against which we would make a judgment and inviting representations. It was a very open process, and we took representations. We were still in discussion with the family at the end of the two months, and we extended the period for a further two months. Until yesterday, I last saw Mrs Finucane in Washington on St Patrick’s day. I gave her an assurance that we wanted to come to a conclusion and resolve the impasse, but we could not do so during the Assembly election period. I promised that that would happen soon after.
It has taken longer, however. This has not been an easy issue to resolve, but what we have done is incredibly bold. We believe that by inviting the family to Downing street so that the Prime Minister can make an apology in person, we have moved the whole argument on.
The original justification for a public inquiry was, bluntly, to put the British Government on the spot and to prove that collusion had happened. We have accepted Stevens and Cory, and by making this bold apology—the Prime Minister made it in a full and frank manner, and I have repeated it today on the Floor of the House—we believe we have created an opportunity to move the argument on.
The question now is how do we get to the truth. That was clearly stated towards the end of today’s Prime Minister’s questions. As we have made clear in the build-up to this statement, we firmly believe that costly open-ended inquiries are not necessarily the best way to get to the truth. Speed is also an issue. Past inquiries have taken a long time. The hon. Member for Gedling mentioned Smithwick. That offers a classic example of the trouble we can get into with an inquiry. It had to be extended. The new Government tried to get an interim report in June and to limit the process to November, but it looks as though they will have to extend that.
What we have done is radical and bold. We have made a full apology, and we now have an opportunity to put in place a new process. There are 1 million documents and there will be more than 9,000 witness statements. That is where the truth lies, and we want to get the truth out. I hope that, on reflection, the hon. Gentleman will come round to agreeing that our approach is novel, bold and brave. It will cost approximately £1.5 million. The main offices will be in London, but obviously that is up to Sir Desmond, and he will certainly be visiting Belfast.
I met Sir Desmond this morning. I have appointed him, and his letter of appointment will be in the Library. He is very keen to get going and to meet the family. How he relates to the family and others is entirely up to him. He can invite people to attend. He does not have the power to demand that witnesses attend, but he will have powers—real powers, I hope—to get access to a huge archive of data. That is where the truth lies—we know the truth is in there—and we now all have an interest in getting to the truth.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the past. As he knows, that is, sadly, a fraught issue. The Minister of State and I have been holding talks since we came into office last June; we have talked to all the political parties and to numerous interest groups. I know about the debate in the Assembly this week. Sadly, as the hon. Gentleman will find out when he goes there on Thursday, there is no consensus on the past. He mentioned the Historical Enquiries Team, which is looking into 3,268 deaths. We are very supportive of it and have always supported it, and we know that it is giving extraordinarily high levels of satisfaction to the families who have so far received reports, but oversight of it is a devolved responsibility, so the hon. Gentleman should discuss funding issues with the Northern Ireland Justice Minister, David Ford.
The Government in Westminster do not own the past. The solution to the past lies very much in the hands of local politicians. We will help to facilitate things, however. I will continue our talks and I will make further statements on our approach soon.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for providing me with early sight of the statement, and I agree with him that accepting that there was collusion is not in itself enough, and that we need to get to the truth of who did what. If that is established, will he confirm that any necessary prosecutions will go ahead? Although it is totally right that we praise the quality of the people who served in the security forces in the past and the outstanding way in which they carry out their work now, we must find out the truth in order to protect the image of those people, who deservedly have a high reputation.
I do not believe that it was necessary to spend so much money on past inquiries. It was the Prime Minister’s response to the Saville inquiry that satisfied people in Northern Ireland. Since then, we have had inquiries that were, perhaps, expensive and that did not reach the truth. I therefore support the Secretary of State’s decision and agree that what is important is not how we get to the truth, but actually getting to the truth.
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the Select Committee Chairman for his support for what we propose to do. Decisions on prosecutions are entirely in the hands of the local Director of Public Prosecutions, so if this review reveals information that justifies the DPP taking action, that is entirely down to him. As I am sure the Chairman knows, on seeing the Stevens papers the previous DPP found that not enough cases met the threshold requirements. I entirely endorse the Chairman’s comments on getting to the truth so that we can honour the vast majority of those who worked in the security forces, bravely defending law and order and democracy. That is exactly what we want to do. There is no offence of collusion, so we need to get to the detail, and I am confident Sir Desmond will do so.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. He said: “The public now need to know the extent and nature of that collusion” and the “task now is to uncover the details of this murder.” How can that possibly be achieved when Sir Desmond cannot compel witnesses to give evidence to his inquiry—which is not really an inquiry? That has created grave disappointment in Northern Ireland. I ask the Secretary of State to review yesterday’s decision and to establish an independent public inquiry that will empower witnesses to give evidence about the true nature and extent of collusion.
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. However, the simple answer to it is no; we are cracking on. We think we have found a solution to the conundrum that was not resolved by the last Government. They had the clear policy of holding a public inquiry, but that was not acceptable under the 2005 Act. We think that through our bold measure of a public and personal apology to the family and going ahead with a review of this huge archive—1 million pages, 9,000-plus witness statements, 16,000 exhibits—we will get to the truth. We strongly believe that this is the right course of action, and that we can then move on from this impasse, which we must do because the situation has been festering.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement and share his view that the independent review should be conducted by such an honourable, experienced and reputable figure as Sir Desmond de Silva; I believe this is the right way forward. I also appreciate the Secretary of State’s commitment that all arms of the Government will offer unrestricted access to Sir Desmond. The murder of Patrick Finucane was a desperate and despicable act and I applaud the Government’s determination to get to the truth. Finally, may I ask the Secretary of State to keep the House informed of the progress of Sir Desmond’s investigation?
Mr Paterson
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comments. Sir Desmond is an independent figure, and it is not for us to interfere in any way in how he conducts the review and the manner in which he proceeds. We have to get the message across that he is an independent figure, and a man of extraordinary integrity and international standing. He is not going to take any advice or accept any interference from the Government. That is not his role. We have appointed him, he is independent, and it is up to him to report back to us in December 2012.
Mr Shaun Woodward (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
I have no doubt that the Secretary of State means well, but I think he is wrong. The inquiry was set up by Tony Blair as part of the peace process, and in breaking the promise that we gave, we are damaging the very foundations of that process. The independent inquiry was fair to everyone; it was fair to the family and the soldiers.
Let me set out my fear. The Secretary of State has said today that he has reached a verdict: there was state collusion. No account has been given of the process by which that verdict has now been reached, however, and we do not know collusion by whom or collusion about what. In this process, we must be fair to the armed forces: we must be fair to those soldiers and members of the police who may need legal representation now. What are they meant to do? Will the Secretary of State guarantee that any men and women who may face prosecution in the future because of his verdict today will be able to have a fair trial?
Mr Paterson
I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman has not supported what we have done. I pay tribute to his work as Secretary of State. He managed to pull off the great coup of seeing the final plank of devolution put in place. Getting the devolution of policing and justice was not an easy task. We worked together, supporting him strongly at the time, and it was a considerable achievement. The House should recognise that and be grateful.
Obviously, given the right hon. Gentleman’s knowledge, I am disappointed by his comments. I do not wish to make a tiresome point, but I did write to Mrs Finucane and met her—he did not. He had three years to resolve this and did not do so. We talked about it privately and we both know how extraordinarily difficult the conundrum was. He stuck to the line, which we have heard again from his successor—it is totally understandable and coherent—that a public inquiry was offered, under the Inquiries Act 2005. We inherited a logjam; I really felt that this issue was festering. People must get hold of the boldness of what we have done. The Prime Minister has invited the family in to apologise in person. We are going to have a really thorough review. Sir Desmond is not a patsy; he is a man of extraordinary integrity and international repute. I fear that the report may be very difficult for us, but we will come to the House, as we did with Saville, with Nelson and with Wright, and make appropriate comments.
The right hon. Gentleman mentions individuals. Stevens, after probably the longest criminal investigation in British history, said clearly in his report:
“I have uncovered enough evidence to lead me to believe that”—
the murder—
of Patrick Finucane…could have been prevented.”
He continued:
“I conclude there was collusion in”—
the murder—
“and the circumstances surrounding”
it. The problem is that there is no offence of collusion, which is why we have appointed Sir Desmond. As I said in answer to a previous question, should evidence come forward that, in the opinion of the DPP, goes over the threshold, the legal process will take its course.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
This widespread though not unanimous support for the statement by the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister has been seen before when other Prime Ministers and Secretaries of State have taken initiatives to break logjams. I put it to the Secretary of State that getting to the truth is an important part of coming to terms with history. May I end by saying that we should respect and support lawyers, journalists and families who stand by those who are victims or potential victims, those who are accused and even those who have been convicted, because representing the unpopular and the marginal is an important part of an open and democratic society?
Mr Paterson
I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. He served as a Northern Ireland Minister and is aware of the sensitivities of issues in Northern Ireland. He is absolutely right to say that lawyers and politicians who stand up for unpopular, controversial views have every right to speak and every right to life. That is why this murder is shocking, and it is why we want to get to the truth and find out what happened.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
I begin by welcoming the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) to his post as shadow Secretary of State, and I look forward to working with him. He has good experience of Northern Ireland and I am sure that we will have useful exchanges in the weeks and months ahead.
I welcome what the Secretary of State has said today in the House. The murder of Pat Finucane in my constituency was an atrocious, terrible, despicable crime. Every person involved, either in carrying out that murder or complicit in it, deserves to be brought to justice—let there be no mistake and equivalence on this issue. Does the Secretary of State accept that across Northern Ireland reasonable people on all sides agree that the idea of more costly, open-ended inquiries into such crimes is simply not reasonable, not least on the grounds of expense, but also because it has been proved that they do not bring closure and elevate certain crimes above others? He has already referred to the fact that more than 3,000 people have been murdered, 1,000 of them in the security forces. We owe it to all the victims to ensure that all murders are investigated, that their relatives are equally cherished and that there is justice for everyone. In going forward, an absolute assurance must be given for those who have died that the interests of terrorists and those who carried out terrorism are not elevated to the same status as those who protected communities and who were totally innocent.
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and for welcoming our proposals, and I admired his wholehearted denunciation of this terrible crime. I agree with him; I think that the approach of the Historical Enquiries Team is correct. It is treating every one of these appalling deaths—3,268 deaths is a dreadful number—in an equal manner. In some cases, its attempts meet with great difficulty, as there is limited evidence—limited forensics, no DNA and so on. I admire the consistent record of satisfaction that the HET has given to the families who have received reports so far.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
I commend my right hon. Friend’s selection of Sir Desmond de Silva for the task. Sir Desmond is an outstanding international lawyer. He prosecuted war crimes in Sierra Leone in very difficult circumstances, and it is worth the House recalling that he managed to indict Charles Taylor for war crimes, establishing for the first time under international law that Heads of State did not have immunity from prosecution for war crimes. Sir Desmond is a fearless lawyer. May I ask my right hon. Friend for some clarification? Will Sir Desmond be treated by the machinery of government, and by everyone involved, with the courtesy that would be extended to a High Court judge? What exactly are his powers?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his welcome of Sir Desmond’s appointment and I wholly endorse the description of him as fearless. The House perhaps does not know that as a young barrister, aged 28, Sir Desmond represented 16 individuals facing death at the gallows, and that he saw off several assassination attempts and the 16 people were acquitted. He is someone of real international integrity and repute. I did say that I would place his letter of appointment in the Library, and it is for a distinguished lawyer such as my hon. Friend to decide whether the powers are similar to those of judges or other lawyers. The Government have said that we will make available all the papers that Sir Desmond wishes to see, and I do not think that I can make a more open or clear statement than that.
Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)
In 2004, I announced the inquiries into the deaths of Nelson, Billy Wright and Hamill, and in September of that year I also announced an inquiry into the Pat Finucane case. It seems to me that we were under an obligation to do that because of agreements that had been held, and anything that falls short of that obviously will not get the support of the Finucane family. They did not support the idea of an inquiry under the 2005 legislation, but they certainly will not support this so-called “inquiry”. However distinguished the lawyer, it simply is not going to work. I urge the Secretary of State to think again.
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question. I pay tribute, again, to his distinguished work in Northern Ireland, but I would remind him of the position that I just described to one of his successors, the right hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Mr Woodward). We were facing an impasse. We fully respected what he had done and the reasons for introducing the 2005 Act, following the Saville inquiry, which was getting out of control—everyone understood that. We understood the commitment he made at Weston Park, but this was going nowhere. It is no good having a Mexican stand-off, with things going nowhere, because we want to move Northern Ireland on. This is an extraordinarily fraught and difficult case. I think that we have been very bold and courageous in making this apology—a full, frank apology to the family, given face to face with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in Downing street—and then working with the family to establish the truth.
Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the leadership offered by the Prime Minister, as well as his bold apology. I think it is absolutely right that we do that. I offer my sympathies to the Finucane family, as I do to the 3,500 other families out there who lost loved ones in a tragic period of the history of these islands. The truth is important, but I have a school in Ilkley that needs to be rebuilt, and after the obscene amount of money that has been spent on previous inquiries, I say to the Secretary of State that I would rather see taxpayers’ money spent there than on filling the pockets of lawyers in Belfast. Does he agree with me?
Mr Paterson
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and pay tribute to him as someone who served in the armed forces in Northern Ireland at a very difficult time, trying to maintain the peace and to preserve law and order and democracy. He and I, as Conservatives, were elected on a platform of no more costly and open-ended inquiries and we are quite clear about that. I am more concerned, however, about the effectiveness of the inquiries. My worry, having met Mrs Finucane, is the time they take and the complication that they cause. I believe that our solution will get to the truth quicker than a public inquiry would have done.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
We all feel for Geraldine Finucane and her family today after what they found to be a pretty insulting and insensitive experience yesterday with the let-down in Downing street. We also feel for all the victims of the troubles, many of whom still deserve truth and not just from the state. Will the Secretary of State explain how the Finucane family clearly had a different understanding or impression of what was going to be offered yesterday? Will he also explain whether the Irish Government were fully briefed as the full partners of the Weston Park commitments on what was afoot and what was to unfold? Will the Secretary of State stop patronising the family and this House by talking about a bold move to resolve an impasse, because all he has done is bypass the case for an inquiry by setting up a twilight-zone review that will not be able to compel witnesses?
Mr Paterson
I resent that statement. I wrote to Mrs Finucane on 28 June, three weeks after we came to power, inviting her in. Unlike my predecessor, I had a meeting with her and her son and we set out very clearly in a written statement, which the hon. Gentleman saw on 11 November 2010, the criteria against which we could make a decision. It is most unfortunate—and we were genuinely very disappointed yesterday at the reaction, because we have looked at all sorts of options and we have been working on this. We made it clear—[Interruption.] We made it clear in our statement to the House that there was a range of criteria against which we would make a decision, bearing in mind the commitments and the position of the family. We talked about delays, we mentioned the political developments that have happened since in Northern Ireland. A whole range of criteria were very clearly laid out in a transparent manner in a written ministerial statement and at no stage did we give them any misleading information about where our decision was going. There has been nothing said in public.
I am in regular contact with the Irish Government. I was in Dublin last week, where I saw the Tanaiste, and the Prime Minister spoke to the Taoiseach yesterday. I spoke to the Tanaiste twice, I spoke to the Minister for Justice and Equality and I am in regular contact with the Irish ambassador. We are in regular contact and they knew that we were getting nearer a solution, but it is an incredibly sensitive subject and we made it quite clear to everyone that we had to talk to the family first.
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Will he confirm that all the material and all the conclusions of Sir Desmond’s report will be made fully available to this House and the public regardless of how embarrassing that might be to Her Majesty’s Government?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. We are absolutely clear. We have been quite open about previous reports—Saville, Nelson, Billy Wright. They were uncomfortable, difficult reports but we came straight to the House of Commons as soon as we could and made a statement. We intend to do that, whatever Sir Desmond uncovers.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
As others have said, the path to peace in Northern Ireland has been based on a willingness to negotiate and to honour agreements. I regret, as others do, the fact that the Finucane family would not accept a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act, but does the Secretary of State not accept—I say this not to score points, but as a genuine supporter of the peace process in Northern Ireland—that there is a real risk that public confidence in the Government’s good faith will have been undermined by this decision and that cracking on, as he put it, is not always the best way in Northern Ireland? What I learned there was that it is never too late, and I urge him again to reconsider.
Mr Paterson
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that question and give credit to him for the work he did in his years as Minister with responsibility for security in Northern Ireland. We remain in touch—we even saw each other at the Conservative party conference last week, which he might be embarrassed to have on the record—and I am sorry that he does not agree. We had a problem. It was no good saying that we had inherited the Labour position of offering an inquiry under the Inquiries Act, which the family would not accept. We had to do something. We had to look at a way of resolving the issue, as we want to move on. I made it very clear to Mrs Finucane when I met her that we wanted to find a solution. Our solution was not to carry on with the impasse but to be imaginative. As I have said, I think our solution is bold and brave. I have great confidence that Sir Desmond will get to the truth and that we will come back here in December 2012 with a very robust report that will help move Northern Ireland on. It is not satisfactory that we do not know what happened in this case.
Mr Speaker
Order. These are matters of the utmost seriousness and I very much appreciate the Secretary of State’s attempt to engage with each questioner, but may I gently point out that progress has been, to put it mildly, leisurely to date and if I am to accommodate all colleagues, which I wish to do, there is therefore a premium on brevity from Back and Front Benchers alike from now on. We will be led in this exercise by Mr Mel Stride.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I shall indeed be brief. I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, not least his reiteration of the apology to the Finucane family for collusion. Will he confirm that although we will not be seeking uncosted and open inquiries in the future, sufficient resources, as deemed by Sir Desmond, will be made available to enable a full and serious review?
Mr Paterson
We have discussed things with Sir Desmond and we are confident that we will provide adequate resources to enable him to complete his task by December 2012.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
I first pay tribute to the hundreds of thousands of security forces who served in Northern Ireland with great professionalism and bravery. Last week, my family received the review summary report on the brutal murder of my loved ones, Robert and Rachel McLernon, on 7 February 1976. We are studying that at this present time. Does the Secretary of State agree with me that all innocent victims of violence—including those at Darkley, Teebane, La Mon and so on—have a right to justice rather than our yielding to the endless demands of a select few?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question and I wholly endorse his comments on those who served. I have already said in previous responses that I admire the work of the Historical Enquiries Team, which treats every one of these victims the same and does its very best under difficult circumstances and sometimes, tragically, with limited evidence, to get as near as it can to the truth.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State accept that the Government might have got this badly wrong? Will he also concede today that it was a crass misjudgment to invite the Finucane family across yesterday, raising hopes and expectations, only to tell them that the pledge of a proper public inquiry had been withdrawn? So that the House can be clear about the responsibility, was the misjudged decision his or the Prime Minister’s?
Mr Paterson
I regret the tone of that question. Sadly, the right hon. Gentleman has completely missed the point. We came in and inherited an impasse—I do not want to vex you, Mr Speaker, by repeating this. The previous Government, whom the right hon. Gentleman supported, was going nowhere on this and we had to break the logjam. I made the approach, I met the family, I put out the written statement and I discussed this with the Prime Minister. We are a collegiate Government and we worked this out together, but it was the Prime Minister’s personal apology in Downing street that was a very bold gesture to move this on.
Mr Speaker
I am pleased to tell the Secretary of State that I am not vexed.
Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Belfast South) (SDLP)
Does the Secretary of State accept that cracking on in the wrong direction may not be the right thing to do and that this tragic case has roots that lead right back to this House and a previous Government? A Home Office Minister in this House pointed the finger at lawyers a few days before Pat Finucane was murdered and that was sufficient endorsement for a few people—elements in the police and security forces—to send out lunatics in the loyalist paramilitaries to plan the murder of three lawyers, two of whom, now deceased, were friends of mine. The dogs in the street knew this at the time. In doing that, disrepute was brought on hon. Members across the House and those elsewhere who were members of the security forces and of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
We now accept that there was collusion. May I ask the Secretary of State whether the proposed review will confine itself to the narrow details of the murder of Pat Finucane, or will it include investigations into the wider collusion and plotting to kill those other lawyers? Does he know of the destruction of any papers? He will be aware that papers are brought in. I am concerned that Sir Desmond, who is a very honourable and highly reputable man, does not have the power to summon people and papers; his teeth have been removed and many of the papers have been taken out.
Mr Paterson
I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was present when I read out the terms of reference, but they are very clear that the review is to draw on the extensive investigations that have already taken place—I have listed the organisations—into the murder of Pat Finucane. That is quite clear.
Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
The former intelligence officer and private investigator Philip Campbell Smith has admitted to hacking the computer of another intelligence officer on behalf of Alex Marunchak of News International. Campbell Smith was arrested for witness intimidation of the very same intelligence officer, who was supposedly the only officer from the intelligence community co-operating with the Stevens inquiry into the death of Pat Finucane. It is alleged that when he was interviewed by the police he admitted that a special branch officer working on the Stevens investigation gave that personal information. I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to allowing Sir Desmond access, presumably, to the police statement that was given, but if Sir Desmond wants to interview that special branch officer and that officer refuses, what powers will Sir Desmond have to get to the truth?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful for that question, and the hon. Gentleman has made some interesting comments. These are issues for Sir Desmond to resolve, but we believe that he will find the truth in the 9,000 statements taken under caution. We should not be under any illusion that some of the previous public inquiries got all witnesses to come forward. Indeed, the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) did not turn up to an inquiry and was fined £5,000 because, on a point of principle, he did not want to give information. We need to get away from the idea that a public inquiry will always bring witnesses forward and will always be more effective. We have 9,000 witness statements and 1 million pages to investigate as a route to the truth. I think that is a quicker way of doing things.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and his recommitment to recognising the dedication and bravery of the security forces, 99.9% of whom have obeyed, kept and upheld the law. Nothing that is said today should sully the names of those people. Does the Secretary of State understand that in Northern Ireland the track record of public inquiries is not perceived as good? Even where Governments have indicated that inquiries should not be expensive, they have been, and where Governments have said that they should bring closure, they have not brought closure. Does he accept that today’s statement and announcement should mean that we start spending scarce resources on the future rather than wasting them on the past?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. We were quite clear before, during and after the election that we believe there should not be any more costly and open-ended inquiries. We believe this is a swifter and better route and I agree that if we can resolve some of these outstanding issues—I have gone on about the impasse—we can all begin to address problems of the present and the future. That is what we are trying to do.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
All the atrocities committed were condemned at the time, during the 1980s and 1990s, and there was no selective condemnation. Whatever the sources of the murders, they were condemned by both sides of the House. However, will the Secretary of State recognise that this case is different, because of the extent of collusion by the state, and that the integrity of the state itself is in question. Bearing in mind that there have been two previous one-person inquiries—by Stevens and Judge Cory—that have not reached a satisfactory conclusion, is it not understandable that the family who have fought so hard for justice are so disappointed by the decision that has been reached?
Mr Paterson
Again, I say that we accept the verdict of Stevens that there was collusion and we have apologised. What we have set out today is a swift route to the truth.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
May I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and express my disappointment that the anger that has been expressed by the family is being used to indicate that the peace process in Northern Ireland is so fragile that it will somehow fall apart as a result of the disappointment of one family? The Secretary of State has given us details about the inquiry, but will he also tell us the cost of the inquiry so far and give us an assurance that this marks a permanent end to the expensive public inquiry process of dealing with the past, which has done nothing to heal wounds but has filled the wallets of lawyers?
Mr Paterson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support. This is not an inquiry—it is a review—and I appointed Sir Desmond only this morning. To repeat, we estimate the cost to be £1.5 million. I entirely endorse the hon. Gentleman’s opinion that we need to move on. Let me pick up on an earlier comment. A few weeks ago, I was in Enniskillen, where I met about 100 young people who were asked their three priorities. Not one of them mentioned the past. I think there is a generational issue here. For those affected—the 3,268 people and any of their relatives and for the Finucane family—these events are absolutely, shatteringly appalling. Their whole adult lives have been dominated by them and we have to recognise that, but there is a new generation coming through and we have to think about them. That is why we have to resolve these outstanding issues and move on.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Soon after I was elected in 1997, I led an Adjournment debate on the Finucane case and I do not doubt the Minister’s wish to move on. However, one thing I learned in that debate and afterwards was that unless the family sanctions the process of moving on, this will be a futile exercise. No one doubts the abilities of Sir Desmond de Silva, but, as has been pointed out, he will not have the legally enforceable right either to access papers or to demand the appearance of witnesses. I believe that unless the process has the family’s approval it will be tainted from the outset. The family was shocked yesterday. May I ask the Minister, before he takes the next step, to take a pause to allow the family to consider its position, come back and enter into more dialogue with the Government before we blunder into yet another mistake?
Mr Paterson
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman takes that attitude. I do not want to repeat myself too often, but we inherited an impasse. The solution proposed by his Government was going nowhere; indeed, it was not a solution and this was festering. We fully appreciate the horror of this murder and the international significance of it. We honestly believe that getting the Prime Minister to invite the family over and meet them in person was a bold, brave move, and we sincerely believe that the appointment of this international lawyer of impeccable integrity will get to the truth faster than would have happened under a statutory inquiry, which the family would not have accepted.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
It seems strange for the Secretary of State to say that the truth lies in the archives. It would then have lain in the archives for over 22 years; if the truth is there, why is someone not already in jail? Witnesses need to be called in a proper way, and that could happen only through a public inquiry. Clearly, this is more about the Conservative party looking to its manifesto and saving money than about justice being done.
Mr Paterson
I regret the tone of that contribution, which reduces the level of our debate, and I wholly reject what the hon. Gentleman says. I believe that the Prime Minister took a bold step. I think that the hon. Gentleman’s views will be refuted in December 2012.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
The Secretary of State said that his party was elected on a platform of no more expensive or open-ended inquiries, but I am not convinced that the coalition came into government with that stance. I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister has apologised for state collusion in the murder of Pat Finucane, but I was a bit disconcerted when the Secretary of State said in his statement that collusion was not itself a criminal offence. Representatives of the state have acted criminally; a criminal investigation should ensue. Prosecution of those complicit in the murder of Pat Finucane should come after that. May we have some guarantees that that will take place?
Mr Paterson
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman understands that the Director of Public Prosecutions is, and should remain, wholly independent of Government. The previous DPP found that some cases did not achieve the necessary threshold. Obviously, should Sir Desmond reveal evidence in his report, in line with the independence vested in him, it will be entirely for the DPP to investigate and pursue it.
Points of Order
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Last week, the BBC announced 2,000 job cuts. That is a direct result of the licence fee imposed on it by the Government. We were expecting some form of ministerial statement on the subject—at least a written one, if not an oral one. Have you had any indication from the Government that a Minister will come before the House to give some form of statement on the subject?
Mr Speaker
I have not, but I have a feeling that the hon. Gentleman will, very properly, return to the matter, possibly at business questions tomorrow, but if not, in another way, and pretty soon.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday at the Health Committee, in response to a question of mine, the Secretary of State told us:
“I’m not aware—my colleagues may be—where trusts are seeking to manage their costs by downgrading of existing staff. If you are aware of that, please, by all means, tell us but I’m not aware of it.”
Today a statement has been issued by Janet Davies, executive director of nursing at the Royal College of Nursing, which says that
“the Royal College of Nursing has raised the issue of downbanding with the Secretary of State on a number of occasions, alongside other concerns such as recruitment freezes and redundancies in the NHS.”
Mr Speaker, have you had any indication that a written statement, or perhaps a formal apology, will be forthcoming from the Secretary of State?
Mr Speaker
The short answer is that I am aware of neither, but I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order and advance notice of her intention to raise it. The issue, in so far as we are talking about appearances before a Committee, is a matter for the Committee rather than the Chair, unless and until the Committee draws the matter to the attention of the House. Meanwhile, the hon. Lady has registered her concerns forcefully on the record.
United Kingdom Bioethanol Industry
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay before Parliament an independent report on methods for supporting the domestic bioethanol production industry; and for connected purposes.
The Prime Minister said last week:
“Whatever it takes to help our businesses…we’ll do it.”
Well, now is his chance. The UK bioethanol industry has invested more than £500 million over the past five years, and a lot more is planned. That is based on the UK’s commitment to implementing the EU renewable energy directive and having biofuel content in our petrol.
Ensus has built Europe’s largest bioethanol refinery in my constituency, and it started up in February 2010. More investment is planned in the constituencies of the hon. Members for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). However, the Ensus plant came offline at the end of May and remains shut. The situation is uncertain. The jobs of 2,000 people at the plant and in the supply chain are at risk. This is not a tale of commercial gross misjudgement; it is mostly a tale of being let down by politicians. Sadly, it is a common story. Instead of leading the world in green technology, we are way behind and playing catch-up, but other countries are moving even faster. In 2010, we slipped from third to 10th in the world green investment league.
So what are the problems affecting the bioethanol industry? First, the previous Government repeatedly delayed and watered down the renewable transport fuel obligation. They had form, with similar dithering bankrupting the early investors in biodiesel production. The original 2003 target was 8.8% by 2010-11. The target now is 5%, which will not be reached until 2013-14, so there has been major delay. That has radically moved the goalposts for an industry that has a long lead time for investments coming on stream.
Secondly, there are issues to do with UK fiscal policy, which actually discriminates against biofuels. Those fuels are, by their nature, energy products, but they are taxed by volume at the same rate as the fossil fuels that they are intended to replace. As biofuels have a lower energy content by volume, they face a heavier tax burden despite being the greener option. That is hindering the uptake of biofuels in the UK.
The EU Commission has announced proposals to revise the energy taxation directive, which are now being negotiated by the European Council. Under the revised directive, transport fuels would be taxed, at the minimum level, according to energy content and carbon content, rather than by volume. The UK should support the adoption of the revisions to the directive at EU level and reform UK fiscal policy. Transport fuels with the best carbon and sustainability performance should be available to the consumer at the pump at the lowest cost, in terms of pence per mile.
Thirdly, there are US imports. The UK market is dominated by US imports, which exploit loopholes in our tariff structure and receive domestic subsidies for their production. Bioethanol used for blending with petrol in transport fuel is imported to the UK already partly blended. It is then classified as a chemical product and dealt with under chapter 38 of the UK trade tariff. The customs duty payable is much lower than it ought to be, especially when comparison is made with many other EU member states. Bioethanol imported under that code is able to undercut the market, with damaging consequences for our industry. Many other EU states such as Germany have ensured that only unadulterated ethanol qualifies towards their targets under their renewable transport fuel obligation. That is imported under the equivalent of chapter 22 of the UK trade tariff classification, which carries a much higher tariff. Through that method, they shield their domestic market from the aggressive and unfair import of bioethanol that we experience here.
It is clear that the tariffs present a major problem for the industry. A new operator, Vireol, claims that it has already missed out on a significant multi-million-pound equity investment from a major industry player because of our approach to tariffs, as compared with the approach taken by competing member states. It sees our stance as a serious impediment to the development of a thriving industry in the United Kingdom.
There is a vote on the issue today in Brussels. It beggars belief that only last week a Department for Transport official seriously suggested that the UK should vote against our long-term national interest based on a short-term, tactical, economic assessment. That would mean supporting the US in undermining our industry, based on its subsidised material, which is chemically doctored to exploit a tariff loophole. We need real strategic thinking.
One final issue: the Department of Energy and Climate Change is not always clear about sustainability criteria. Some products are less green than others, and investors need clarity on that vital policy issue. There is a serious lack of joined-up thinking across government when it comes to green technology. The issues are very likely to involve the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Treasury. They will sometimes involve the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and in this case they involve the Department for Transport.
I welcome the recent formation of the green technology council to address the problem of co-ordination. Here is what the Government need to do: I want the green technology council to look urgently at the bioethanol situation. Using this example, it should formulate how to get all Departments and the civil service joined up, fighting together ruthlessly for the national interest as we forge our green future. I want to see the Department for Transport implement the renewable transport fuel obligation as soon as possible and in a predictable way to give the industry the market that it plans for when making major investment decisions. I want to see the Treasury tax biofuels by energy or carbon content, not by volume, and I want to see the UK take action on US imports, get them properly classified and stop this material being dumped here.
There may be those listening to this debate who question the sustainability of the business. To them let me say that the Ensus business is an outstanding example of sustainability. The feedstock is animal feed wheat. The products are bioethanol for use in road fuel, carbon dioxide which, in a separate £20 million investment by another company, is collected for use in the food and drink industry, and animal feed which contains all the protein in the original wheat. It is highly valued by farmers and replaces the import of high protein soya-based animal feed from South America, which is most likely grown on former rain forest land. Those who worry about land use should remember that under the crazy common agricultural policy we are currently paying our farmers not to grow things.
The National Farmers Union has commented on the situation in a letter to the Secretary of State for Transport, saying that
“the NFU has been made acutely aware of the current damage being created to the development of the UK biofuels industry from ethanol imports which can exploit loopholes in the tariffs structure and classification definitions, undermining sustainably produced domestic biofuels.”
The NFU goes on to point out that damage to the industry will have
“additional implications for UK agriculture; reducing market diversity which supports our farm investment, agricultural jobs and rural development while additionally putting at risk availability of useful by-products such as protein for livestock feeds, continuing our increasing reliance on imported products.”
This is an excellent business to have in the UK. Our feed wheat yields are some of the highest anywhere in Europe and the high starch varieties typically grown in the UK are ideally suited—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but there are far too many private conversations going on in the Chamber. The hon. Gentleman has the Floor for his ten-minute rule Bill. Conversations should go on outside the Chamber.
Ian Swales
This is an excellent business to have in the UK. The wheat grown here is ideal for producing bioethanol. We can have a more efficient and cost-effective business than that of Germany, France or Belgium, yet we are significantly lagging behind those countries. The UK has a proud record in process industries and bioethanol should be a key part of our industrial future.
There are many benefits to taking action. A thriving bioethanol industry will help us meet our climate change targets. Energy security will be improved by literally growing our own. Action will encourage further investment in green manufacturing and technology development. There are already other exciting possibilities, above all growth. When fully running Ensus has a turnover of around £250 million. To supply future UK needs there is a £3 billion business out there.
The Bill should be seen as part of the Government’s vital growth agenda and requires that the Chancellor lay before the House a report on the industry. It should cover the specific tax and tariff issues mentioned earlier in my speech, how to encourage further rapid investment in this green industry so that the UK can match the activity of its competitors, and how to ensure that the UK Government and civil service are properly lined up in support. The Government now have a golden opportunity to show that they are serious about their commitments to being green, to promoting manufacturing and, above all, to growth. We should be supporting our jobs, supporting our growth and supporting our bioethanol industry.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Ian Swales, Tristram Hunt, Andrew Percy, Austin Mitchell and Mr David Ward present the Bill.
Ian Swales accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 20 January 2012, and to be printed (Bill 233).
Opposition Day
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Jobs and Growth
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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18:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 244 / Noes: 315 - Question accordingly negatived.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that there has been no growth in the UK economy over the last nine months, compared to 1.8 per cent. growth in the previous nine months; further notes that families are feeling the squeeze, unemployment is rising again and the recovery was choked off last autumn, well before the eurozone crisis of recent months; agrees with the International Monetary Fund’s managing director that ‘growth is necessary for fiscal credibility’ and the IMF’s recent report which warned that ‘if activity were to undershoot current expectations and risk a period of stagnation’ the Government should ‘consider delaying some of their planned consolidation’; further notes that borrowing is forecast to be £46 billion higher than planned because of the slower growth and higher unemployment arising from the Government’s policy of cutting spending and raising taxes too far and too fast; further believes that the Government need a plan for jobs and growth if the deficit is to be reduced in a sustainable way; and calls on the Government to implement a steadier deficit plan and the Opposition’s five point plan for jobs, which includes a tax on bank bonuses to fund 100,000 jobs for young people, bringing forward long-term investment projects, reversing temporarily the VAT increase to provide an average £450 increase for a couple with children, implementing a one-year cut in VAT on home improvements, repairs and maintenance to five per cent, and a one-year national insurance tax break for small firms taking on extra workers.
In opening this Opposition debate on the economy and moving our motion urging the Government to kick-start Britain’s choked-off recovery and adopt Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth, I shall start by setting out the facts for the House and for the country. Over the past year the British economy has ground to a complete halt. The latest figures show no growth at all since last autumn. Consumer and business confidence has slumped. For three months manufacturing output has been falling. More than 16,000 companies have gone out of business. Employment is falling and today’s chilling news is that unemployment has risen by 114,000 in the past three months alone.
Unemployment here in Britain now stands at 2.57 million people out of work—the highest level since 1994. Unemployment is rising across the country. We have the highest level of unemployment among women since 1988. Most worryingly of all, youth unemployment, which a year ago was falling, is now rising again, up 74,000 in the past three months, with 991,000—more than one in five—young people out of work. There has been a 60% rise in youth long-term unemployment since February, and the overall level of youth long-term unemployment is at its highest for 19 years. What a waste of talent, what a waste of money and what a betrayal of this young generation.
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)
The former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, said yesterday:
“I think the economic proposition that Labour puts at the moment is unconvincing.”
How can the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) convince the House and the country when he cannot convince his former Cabinet colleague?
Ed Balls
Unemployment is rising and growth is flatlining. The Prime Minister said just a few months ago that the only person supporting me was The Guardian leader writer. Since then, what have we seen? The OECD and the International Monetary Fund are saying that the Government should change course. What has happened to The Guardian leader writer? He has become the speech writer to the Prime Minister.
To those who say that these are just the effects of a world economic crisis now hitting Britain—the same people who absurdly claim that the global financial crisis was all the fault of the British Labour Government, but who now want to blame the British growth crisis on the rest of the world—I say yes—
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Ed Balls
In a minute.
Yes, the deepening euro crisis and the weaker US recovery have made things harder for British exporters in the past three months, but one cannot blame the eurozone or the world economy for the collapse of economic recovery here in Britain when, since last autumn, our economy has grown more slowly than that of any EU country except Greece and Portugal, when we have the highest level of inflation of any EU country except Estonia and Latvia, and when, over the past year, we have seen a bigger rise in unemployment than the EU average, when most EU countries have seen unemployment not rising, but falling. I know the Chancellor does not like it, but those are the facts. The Prime Minister said today, “I accept responsibility for everything that happens in our economy”. I hope the Chancellor will do the same today.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the trade deficit between ourselves and the 17 countries in the eurozone has gone up from minus £4 billion to minus £38 billion in the past year alone, and that one of the main reasons, both as respects the whole of Europe and as respects the United Kingdom, is that employment and social regulations are strangling small businesses, for which the Labour party was also responsible in Government? I am critical of the present Government, but am I not also critical of the right hon. Gentleman’s party’s performance in the past 10 years?
Ed Balls
The Chancellor’s big boast over the past six months, which we were told regularly, was that between 400,000 and 500,000 more jobs had been created in the British economy, but today’s figures months show that employment has not gone up at all in the past 12 months; it has actually gone down. We were also told that public sector job cuts would be more than outweighed by the rise in private sector jobs, but I am afraid that employment is falling because the private sector has been unable to deliver the recovery we were promised. It has been a complete fantasy.
Christopher Pincher
It is nice that the shadow Chancellor acknowledges the Government’s responsibility for the economy, but it would also be nice if he took some responsibility for the damage he did to it when he was in power. A former Chancellor has said that Labour lacks economic credibility. If the right hon. Gentleman cannot even convince a former Chancellor on his own Back Benches, how can he convince the country?
Ed Balls
The hon. Gentleman will have to convince his constituents because, despite the fact that we were told a year ago that the recovery would be on track, growth has flatlined for a year and unemployment is rising right across the country, which means that borrowing will be higher, not lower.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
The shadow Chancellor responds to questions about his failing to convince his shadow Cabinet colleagues and former Cabinet colleagues by talking about convincing constituents, so why have his poll ratings for economic credibility fallen among his constituents and my constituents and across the whole country?
Ed Balls
I would be happy to have a debate with the hon. Gentleman on economic credibility. He said in June this year:
“Employment has gone up in my constituency and unemployment has been falling, which is welcome.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 426.]
The figures show that unemployment in his constituency has gone up by 456 in the past year. Perhaps he should apologise to his constituents for getting it wrong.
Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)
Will the shadow Chancellor name one country that has managed to get out of recession without growth?
Ed Balls
I will make some progress before giving way again. I am always very happy to take interventions. It is clear that the Chancellor has a good whipping operation in place today, although good whipping is something he knows quite a lot about.
A year ago, we warned that a global hurricane was brewing and that it was exactly the wrong time to rip out the foundations of the house but the Chancellor disagreed and recklessly decided to raise taxes and cut spending further and faster than in any other economy. The evidence is clear that his plan has not made the British economy better able to withstand the global storm and that by going too far and too fast he has left it badly exposed. Families and businesses up and down the country are asking how many more businesses must go bankrupt, how many more families must see their living standards fall, how many more young people will have to lose their jobs, how much more unemployment and misery and rising child poverty must we see. How much more evidence do the Government need before they finally change course?
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the shadow Chancellor for giving way, but I wonder whether he has got it the wrong way round. With a global storm brewing, the right thing to do was ensure that the gilt market was secure and that we could carry on borrowing cheaply, which has ensured that a recovery will eventually come. He can no doubt find something I said in 1830 and quote it back to me, but that is not really the point.
Ed Balls
I am not sure about 1830, but if the hon. Gentleman was in the House in 1930—he might have been—he will know the dangers of very low bond yields accompanied by rising national debt, rising unemployment and economies locked in stagnation. I do not know whether he was around at the time, but some forefathers and foremothers certainly were. Let me quote the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the think-tank of the year, who said:
“The reason people are marking down the gilt yields is because they think that the economy is weak.”
That is the truth.
Let me make a prediction. I do not expect the Chancellor to announce a change of course today, but will we hear him repeat his boast made this time last year that the British economy’s recovery is on track? I doubt it. Will he repeat the Prime Minister’s deeply complacent boast that Britain is out of the danger zone? I doubt that, too. Will he describe Britain as a safe haven that is immune from the global storm? Will he repeat his naive forecast that cutting public jobs will boost private confidence and create more private jobs? Even this Chancellor cannot fly in the face of the facts. Employment has fallen in the past 12 months. On the day when unemployment has risen again, will he give any indication that he understands at all how hard things are for families up and down the country? Is he so out of touch that he really believes that a £1.40 a week council tax freeze can compensate for a £9 a week rise in VAT?
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
On unemployment in manufacturing, why does the shadow Chancellor think that manufacturing was 21% of GDP in 1997 and 12% when Labour left office?
Ed Balls
Well, unemployment has fallen as a percentage—[Interruption.] As I said, that whipping operation knows no bounds. I was hoping that the hon. Gentleman was going to repeat what the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) said earlier this year. He said that
“manufacturing is expanding under this Government”.—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 1024.]
The trouble is that manufacturing output has fallen in every one of the past three—[Interruption.] I am going to agree with the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who wrote on his blog that
“deficit reduction alone isn’t enough. If we are to smooth the waters of this choppy recovery we need to ensure that we also support sustainable growth in the private sector.”
Where is that growth? Will the Chancellor repeat his claim that—
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Peter Tapsell
As a lifelong Keynesian, I fully understand that growth can be achieved only by increased demand. Every Finance Minister in the western world is grappling with that problem. What are the right hon. Gentleman’s proposals for increasing demand without causing damaging side-effects for the rest of the economy?
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is no surprise that, if the Chancellor announces half a million job cuts in the public sector, those people will save rather than spend and that the people in the private sector, who normally sell things to them, contract and stop taking people on? It is no surprise that that very announcement underpins the lack of growth in our economy and puts the guilt on the Government side of the Chamber.
Ed Balls
I think that the Chancellor will regret talking down the British economy a year ago, because the rise in private sector jobs has been swamped by public sector job cuts. That is why employment is falling. That is why the private sector is not investing. That is why his corporation tax cut has had no impact on private sector investment. Will he repeat his claim made in January 2009 that
“quantitative easing is the last resort of desperate governments when all their other policies have failed”?
Those are prescient words, because we know the truth, and so do his increasingly desperate-looking supporters on the Government Benches.
Let me say what the Chancellor cannot admit: the private sector-led recovery he promised has proved to be a fantasy, as we predicted. In the past year, the growth that he predicted has failed to materialise.
Ed Balls
In a moment.
Unemployment is rising, and a vicious cycle of higher unemployment, fewer people in work paying tax and more people on benefit means that the Chancellor’s deficit reduction plan is going badly off track. We all know the truth, and so does he—plan A has failed.
Sajid Javid
Can the right hon. Gentleman name one country that has got out of a debt crisis by taking on more debt?
Ed Balls
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. If, rather than preparing his intervention, he had listened to my last point, he would have understood why borrowing is already set to be £46 billion higher than the Chancellor planned. The reason is that if unemployment goes up, if the economy flatlines, if fewer people are paying tax and if more people are on benefits, you borrow more. In the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, 50 more people are unemployed than a year ago. Perhaps he should be apologising for backing a Chancellor who got it so badly wrong.
This increasingly desperate Chancellor is now relying on plan B—or should I say plan BOE? But quantitative easing cannot work on its own, and any sensible economist can tell him why that is. The new shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), who is a former Bank of England economist, can certainly explain to the Chancellor why quantitative easing cannot do the job on its own. Whether the current Chief Secretary—the former national parks press officer—could explain to the Chancellor how quantitative easing works is another question. As the shadow Chief Secretary could very well explain—[Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) want to intervene? If so, I will happily take his intervention.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
As a former Bank of England economist, may I explain to the shadow Chancellor that quantitative easing works only when one has a credible fiscal policy?
Ed Balls
I am so pleased that the hon. Gentleman has made his intervention, because we have missed him for the past couple of debates, and now he is back. Last time he intervened on me, he put this on his website:
“Shadow Chancellor boosts Matthew’s work in West Suffolk”.
I want to do the same again. His campaigns to get more money for schools, to keep Thetford forest safe and to stop cuts to school crossing patrols are going well. The chief executive of his council has been sacked, and the Labour council in Ipswich has intervened and backed his campaign on school crossing controls and libraries. I have a quote from the shadow Chancellor for his press release: “Mr Hancock has been tireless in his campaign against unfair cuts to local services imposed by the Conservative-led Government—cuts which go too far and too fast.” He can leave the last bit out if he likes; I do not mind.
Ed Balls
I will give way, but before I do, let me return to quantitative easing. As these Bank of England economists know well, simply printing money cannot boost demand and keep interest rates low when they are already close to zero. Printing money cannot boost spending when companies are too scared to invest and consumers to spend. QE—the hon. Gentleman should know this—cannot revive a stalling economy by boosting demand in one direction when fiscal policy is working in a contractionary way in completely the opposite direction. As the Bank of England Governor said only last week, and in this respect I agree with him:
“We can do our part in it but we can’t solve all our problems alone.”
I now give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Matthew Hancock
The shadow Chancellor is famous for being a supporter of Norwich City football club, so will he join me in welcoming the decision to break ground on dualling the A11—an investment project that did not get the go-ahead under Labour and is happening under this Conservative Government?
Ed Balls
I think the hon. Gentleman got the name wrong. He does not mean Norwich City—he means premiership Norwich City, which is more than one can say for any football team in Suffolk. I will back his campaigns to stop the cuts and to spend more, and I fully support the dualling of the A11. At last some Conservatives have persuaded some Conservative councils to do the right thing about these proposals, which is very good.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
It is all very humorous here today, but in my constituency we already have above-average national levels of unemployment and unemployment has increased. It is always interesting to hear an economist debate with another economist. However, may I ask the shadow Chancellor what direct personal experience he has of working in business, helping to create jobs, and knowing what it is like to make payroll each week? If he does not have any of that experience, will he please undertake to this House that he will go out and get some?
Ed Balls
I have worked in Government and at the Financial Times. I have never run a business, but I respect people who run businesses and I understand why they are so worried at the moment. In the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, where unemployment has gone up by over 400 in the past 12 months, there will be some very worried businesses, and it is important that we listen to them and hear what they are saying.
That is why now is the time for our oh-so-political Chancellor to put politics aside and start to do the right thing. Protecting our economy and protecting valuable businesses and jobs is more important than trying to protect a failed plain. We do not have to wait for another month of unemployment rising, or for 46 more days until we finally get the economic and fiscal forecast from the Chancellor, to know what he is going to have to say. He is going to have to downgrade his growth forecast for this year for the fourth time in 18 months and downgrade his growth forecast for next year. As I have explained, we already have £46 billion more borrowing in the pipeline, and unemployment is now rising. He is going to have to admit that borrowing will be billions higher still than at the time of his last forecast. The Prime Minister says:
“You can’t borrow your way out of a debt crisis”,
but he just doesn’t get it. [Interruption.] No, he doesn’t get it. Because with growth flatlining, and with today’s bleak news of rising unemployment, the Chancellor’s failing plan is leading to not lower borrowing but higher borrowing than he planned.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
Whatever the Government’s policy, the Opposition’s policy is to borrow more to increase demand. Is there a limit on the borrowing?
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman has talked about infrastructure and the A11. Labour cancelled the road-building programme, whereas we are breaking new ground on the A11. In addition, so much red tape was put in place that we are now 83rd in the world for regulation. Does he think that is helping small businesses in our country?
Ed Balls
To be fair to the hon. Lady, she is half on message, as she was back in January when she called for national police cuts, but not in Norfolk. That is little better than her neighbour over the border, the hon. Member for West Suffolk. I am in favour of the dualling of the A11. I personally wish we had done that, given that we did a lot of road-building and investment, but for some reason Norwich City season ticket holders did not have a strong enough voice in this House. Perhaps Mr Charles Clarke is to blame.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
Is my right hon. Friend as outraged as I am by the series of east of England Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs who choose to ignore the massive cuts to programmes such as Building Schools for the Future, which would have rebuilt schools in their own areas?
Ed Balls
My hon. Friend is being unfair. The hon. Member for West Suffolk campaigned to reverse the cuts in Building Schools for the Future, as we know. To be fair to the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), she has campaigned for fewer cuts in Norfolk. If only she did not take such a regional view.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
I congratulate the shadow Chancellor on listening to what I said in this place a year ago and on the major change in Labour’s economic policy in the last three weeks, which has gone unnoticed. Last year’s policy of a permanent reduction in VAT has changed to the far more credible policy of a temporary reduction in VAT, which is precisely what I argued for in this place a year ago. Will the shadow Chancellor listen carefully if I have the chance to make a point about national insurance in this debate?
Ed Balls
My hon. Friend is a leading indicator, not a lagging indicator.
The fact is that the deficit plan is going too far and too fast. As I have said, we should stop putting party political advantage before the national interest. That is why the right thing to do to help struggling families and businesses in the constituencies of Members across the House is to adopt a plan now to get our deficit down by getting our economy moving. We should repeat the bank bonus tax; build 25,000 homes; guarantee a job for 100,000 young people; genuinely bring forward long-term investment projects in schools, transport and roads; temporarily reverse the damaging rise in VAT, which would mean £450 for a couple with children; have an immediate one-year cut in VAT to 5% on home improvement, repairs and maintenance; and introduce a one-year national insurance tax break for every small firm that takes on extra workers.
The Chancellor does not have to wait 46 days. He can bring forward emergency resolutions in this House next week and we will support them. He can call the plan what he likes. If he wants to appease The Spectator, he can call it plan A-plus. That is fine by us. Britain just needs a plan that works for jobs and growth, which is why he should adopt Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
While we are on the topic of football, may I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his ample use of the substitutes’ bench, although it was of course not him who used the substitutes’ bench? What would be the cost of his temporary cut in VAT, how does he propose to finance it, and what would be the gain in GDP growth as a result?
Ed Balls
“Jesse is the Clark Kent of British politics.” Unfortunately, that was said by the other candidate for the leadership of the Conservative party, Boris Johnson. What an endorsement for the hon. Gentleman to have on his own website! The fact is that the deficit reduction plan is going too far—
Ed Balls
Get back in your phone box, I am answering the question. We need a slower pace of deficit reduction, not the £40 billion more that the Chancellor boasted of. An injection now to get the economy growing and unemployment coming down is the best way to get our deficit down. People do not have to take it from me; that is what the IMF and the OECD are advising the Chancellor to do. They say, “If the economy gets into sustained contraction, slow down the pace of consolidation.” I will give the hon. Gentleman another go.
Jesse Norman
We are all enjoying the shadow Chancellor’s vaudeville act, but he has failed to answer the question. I am interested in what would be the actual cost of the VAT cut that he proposes and how he would fund it.
Ed Balls
The hon. Gentleman would know the answer if he listened. I said that attempting to go £40 billion faster in deficit reduction than the plan the Chancellor inherited is not working, but pushing borrowing up. The right thing to do now is to expand demand—[Interruption.] Look, a one-year cut in VAT in its own terms would cost £12 billion. The question is what would be the impact on jobs, growth and deficit reduction. I am afraid that the Chancellor is borrowing not £12 billion more, but £46 billion more. The flatlining economy and rising unemployment mean that his deficit reduction plans are going off track. He should take the advice of the IMF and the OECD and change course.
Ed Balls
I will make a little more progress, but I will take interventions from people who have not intervened. Good grief, I have given the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) enough of the wrong type of publicity already and do not want to do his career any more damage.
There is a credible alternative. Why will the Chancellor not act? He used to be so confident that his plan was working. It is patently not working. He and his cheerleaders on the Government Benches claim that however bad things get, he is trapped by the financial markets. He cannot take the advice of the IMF and the OECD and change course because it would lead to higher interest rates and recession. However, the IMF has said that we cannot have credibility without growth.
The markets know that rising unemployment and zero growth are undermining the Chancellor’s deficit reduction plan. One chief economist in the City at Baring Asset Management said last week:
“Growth is essential if the UK is to be able to finance new debt, repay old debt and convince the markets and credit rating agencies there is a modicum of competency in policymaking. The longer we pursue current policies, the more likely it becomes that the UK will be the next target”.
That is the real market view. We know that the credit rating agencies put out their press releases, but the real view, as the IMF has told us, is that having a flatlining economy and rising unemployment is the wrong way to get the deficit down. As I said, even the Chancellor’s friend at the IMF has said that
“growth is necessary for fiscal credibility”.
Britain has no growth. That is why our Chancellor is losing credibility.
Harriett Baldwin
Will the shadow Chancellor confirm that cutting VAT to 17.5% would cost £12.5 billion a year? Would that not simply shift demand from one year to the next?
Ed Balls
The Chancellor’s whipping team really must tell people to listen to the answers before they intervene.
The Nobel prize winner himself, Chris Pissarides, says in the New Statesman tomorrow that a temporary VAT cut is the right way—[Interruption.] I say to Government Members that Nobel prize winners who give good advice to the Chancellor should be listened to. Given that 70 more people are unemployed in the constituency of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) than a year ago, perhaps she should start to listen too.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I know that the shadow Chancellor is aware of the “Cut the VAT” campaign, which wants the Government to reduce the VAT on home repairs, maintenance and improvement work from 20% to 5%. Its analysis shows that when the rate was 17.5%, cutting it to 5% would have injected £1.4 billion into the UK economy in the first year alone. I wonder whether he is aware that the campaign is backed by 49 business organisations.
Ed Balls
I know the details of that campaign, although I do not know all 49 members. I know that it argues for a widening of our proposal.
One business organisation, the Federation of Small Businesses, has said:
“the Government’s growth strategy is just not working…We must see a cut in VAT to five per cent in the construction and tourism sectors to boost consumer demand.”
The business demand for a change of course is growing.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
My constituents, my right hon. Friend’s constituents and constituents across this country are seeing growth—growth in their gas and electricity bills and in their food bills. That double whammy is hitting our constituents on top of the mess that the Chancellor is making.
Ed Balls
Our constituents are seeing growth in VAT and in unemployment as well. The only thing that they are not seeing is growth in growth.
The markets are not the real reason why the Chancellor is determined to cling on to his failing economic policy. There are two obstacles in his way. The first is the coalition agreement. We know how desperate the Chief Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister are for the Chancellor to stick to the deficit reduction plan, because they steamrollered their colleagues into signing up to a manifesto that explicitly rejected it. The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto stated:
“If spending is cut too soon, it would undermine the much-needed recovery and cost jobs.”
They were right, which is why there are so few of them here for this debate. They all know that their leaders graphically predicted before the election the very calamity that has happened after the election. The fact is, any successful coalition has to have the flexibility to change course when things go wrong.
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”
Wise words from Lord Keynes, and he was a Liberal. He must listen to the current incoherent, confused and contradictory ramblings of the Business Secretary and turn in his grave.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The shadow Chancellor is certainly showing flexibility in concluding that in time, it would be acceptable for VAT to reach 20%. When did he reach that decision, and will he be able to persuade his colleagues, whom we know are so adamantly against VAT at 20%?
Ed Balls
When I became shadow Chancellor six months ago, I said that I could not responsibly come along here and make commitments on what would be in our manifesto in four years’ time. What I can do is give the Chancellor good advice, and a temporary cut now is the right thing for growth and jobs in our economy.
It is not just Labour Members who support me on this. Listen to the former Liberal Democrat leader, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy), who said on “Question Time” last Thursday that he was
“more at the Ed Balls end of the argument than the George Osborne end of the argument.”
In saying that—Superman will like this—he joined me and the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, in urging a change of course. Charles Kennedy, Boris Johnson and me—now that would be a coalition.
It is clear that the plan is not working. The markets know it, and so, increasingly, do the Chancellor’s coalition colleagues, but there is a second reason why this very political Chancellor will not budge. The clue was in the Prime Minister’s speech last week in Manchester. What did he say of the Chancellor? How did he describe his closest political friend? As “the man who would be king”. It was a very strange choice of book, because it is the story of two fantasists who end up stripped, beaten, tortured and forced to beg for their lives. That is some people’s idea of a good night out, but the idea that the Prime Minister should say that of the Chancellor is somewhat odd.
Anyway, there we are—“the man who would be king”. It was not in the printed text of the Prime Minister’s speech but was another slip from him. However, it is so revealing, because those words show why the Chancellor just cannot admit that he has got it wrong, even at a time when, at the weekend, The Sunday Times doubted his judgment. To change course now would be to admit that the Chancellor has got the key economic judgment of this Parliament wrong, and that would be a terrible blow to his ambitions. We therefore see him putting politics before the national economic interest.
Ploughing on with a failing policy is not leadership; it is the antithesis of leadership. It is not the making of King George; it is the madness of King George. A Chancellor without the strength to change his mind is a King Canute Chancellor, who says that he will stay the waves even as the tide turns before him. A man who would be king? He is a Chancellor exposed naked before the crowd, an emperor with no clothes, a Chancellor heading for a fall. I give him some good advice. For his sake, for his party’s sake and in the national interest, he needs to change course and do so quickly. It could be the making of the man.
In the face of the new global slowdown, we desperately need the Chancellor to rise above the here and now and see the need to change course, have a plan for growth and jobs, kick-start our economy and get us out of the slow lane. We need a balanced and credible plan on jobs, growth and the deficit, and action now before it is too late—Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth. I commend the motion to the House.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
I welcome this opportunity to discuss the very difficult economic situation that this country and the rest of the western world face at the moment. After that vaudeville act, I am trying to remember whether the shadow Chancellor actually set out the five-point plan. He did not actually go through it, so we will go through it for him.
Of course, the concern of everyone here is to see growth, support jobs and get Britain through this debt storm; that is what we are talking about and working on. As this is an Opposition day, however, before I turn to what the Government are doing it is worth considering what the Opposition propose, and what the shadow Chancellor did and did not say. We should consider what his political friends, as well as his political opponents, are saying about him.
The right hon. Gentleman dismissed the intervention by one of my hon. Friends about Charles Clarke—[Interruption.] Well, there you go. It was not picked up by the microphones, but the shadow Chancellor just dismissively said, “Charles Clarke!” The Opposition dismiss everyone with whom they served in government. They boo their ex-Prime Ministers, they dismiss their ex-Ministers. Here is what the man who was the Labour Home Secretary said, not weeks ago but yesterday:
“I think the Labour conference failed to come across strongly with an alternative to what the Government is doing. I think the economic proposition that Labour puts at the moment is unconvincing…we are simply dismissed by most people thinking about the most central question facing the country today, which is the economy.”
That is the verdict not of the Conservative party, the Liberal Democrats or anyone else but of former members of the Labour Cabinet.
If we want to know why the shadow Chancellor is failing to convince the country, let alone his own party, of why he has not come forward with a convincing alternative, I suggest that we focus on three things that were not in his speech. I will cover each in turn. First, there was absolutely no plan to deal with the deficit. There was a not a single suggestion of how public expenditure could be saved. Let us remember what he said—
Mr Osborne
I will in a moment, because perhaps the hon. Gentleman can respond to this point.
The shadow Chancellor said, when we debated the matter in August, that he would set out
“a tough, medium-term plan to get our deficit down”.—[Official Report, 11 August 2011; Vol. 531, c. 1110.]
Mr Osborne
He nods, but where on earth is that tough, medium-term plan to get the deficit down? It was promised two months ago. Where are the cuts that he would make? He should give us some examples. We have been waiting for three years for ideas from the Labour party about what it would cut, and none has been forthcoming. The former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), who is in his place, was pretty revealing in his memoir about what was actually going on. He stated that
“the ‘investment versus cuts’ argument…simply wasn’t credible…I did want some examples of things we were prepared to cut. I could see, though, that there was no appetite for this in No. 10.”
And we know who was advising the occupant of No. 10 Downing street at the time.
Ed Balls
The International Monetary Fund has stated that if the UK has a period of stagnation or contraction, the Government should change course and delay their planned tax rise and spending cuts. The economy has flatlined since the autumn, with zero growth. Does that represent the sustained stagnation that would cause the Chancellor to take the IMF’s advice and change course?
Mr Osborne
The right hon. Gentleman quotes the IMF, but its managing director said a month ago that
“in the United Kingdom strong fiscal consolidation is essential to restore debt sustainability… The policy stance remains appropriate.”
The right hon. Gentleman also quoted the OECD, saying that it was telling me to change course, but the OECD’s chief economist, whom he used to quote in the House, says:
“The Government should not change its course. A cut in the VAT…would not be appropriate in our view.”
So before the shadow Chancellor bandies around the recommendations of international organisations, he should quote them properly in the House.
Ed Balls
I will quote them verbatim. The Chancellor quoted the IMF from September and the OECD from before the summer, but let me quote the IMF from October, just two weeks ago. It stated:
“If activity were to undershoot”—[Interruption.]
Let me read it, because the Chancellor has asked for the full quote, which is from October.
“If activity were to undershoot current expectations and risk a period of stagnation or contraction, countries that face historically low yields (for example, Germany and the United Kingdom) should also consider delaying some of their planned consolidation.”
Is that stagnation and contraction in place, and has it been in place for long enough yet to justify his taking the IMF’s advice of just two weeks ago?
Mr Osborne
In precisely the advice that the right hon. Gentleman reads out, the IMF, in its current forecasts for the UK economy, is very specific that the UK should not change its fiscal stance. It has consistently recommended that this country undertake credible deficit reduction. The Government have set out many proposals—controversial proposals—to get our budget deficit down, but in the 16 months that we have been in office we have heard not one single suggestion from the shadow Chancellor on how he would get the deficit down.
Mr Osborne
I will take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention in a second.
Last week, the Opposition tabled an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill that would have cost this country £11 billion. That one amendment on one day in this House of Commons shows how completely incredible they are.
Mr Osborne
The policies that we have set out deliver the low interest rates that are essential for economic growth.
Nadhim Zahawi
The shadow Chancellor has quoted the IMF. Why does the Chancellor think that the Labour party voted against our subscription to the IMF? Why did the Labour Government not put their best people to work to deal with the deficit and the debt, but instead hire 17 people and spend £4.8 million on the euro preparation unit?
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend reminds me that one of the first things I did in the Treasury was shut down the euro preparation unit. More importantly—
Mr Osborne
The shadow Chancellor, who has just been quoting the IMF, wants to intervene again, but let me say this, because my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) reminds me of another important point. Will the shadow Chancellor explain why he led his party—not everyone in his party, because I can see in the Chamber some prominent Labour Members who chose not to vote in that Division—into voting against a quota increase to the IMF, which was a central part of the London G20 summit chaired by the previous Prime Minister? How on earth does he think he could be taken seriously in any of the international meetings taking place at the moment if he had succeeded in winning that vote? Why did he do it?
Ed Balls
As the former chair of the IMF deputies, I am a huge supporter of the IMF. The rise in subscriptions is important, but for the Chancellor to try to ram it through the House before he sorted out the flawed European stability mechanism was a mistake—we voted against because we had doubts about his European policy.
However, to come back to my earlier intervention, let me ask the Chancellor this question again. Unemployment is rising, and output has been flat for a year: how much longer does he have to wait before he takes the IMF’s advice and changes his deficit reduction plan? How bad does it have to get?
Mr Osborne
We are sorting out the mess that we inherited from the Labour party. Much as I wish that that could be done overnight, it cannot. So great was the hole into which they put the British economy that it takes time and effort to come out of it.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Before my right hon. Friend was distracted, he quoted the previous Chancellor, who writes in his memoirs of his last pre-Budget report. He says that any coherent strategy would have been better than none, but that the previous Government simply did not have one. Are not the facts of the matter that the Labour party did not have a coherent economic strategy before the last general election, and that it still does not have one, as we all clearly heard this afternoon in the knockabout speech by the shadow Chancellor?
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The previous Chancellor’s memoirs reveal the very divisive role that the shadow Chancellor played in stopping the previous Labour Government coming up with a coherent economic policy and a credible economic plan, and even in stopping Nos. 10 and 11 talking to each other.
Mr Osborne
I shall tell the hon. Gentleman what I inherited as Chancellor and what this country inherited from the previous Government: we inherited the second deepest recession in the entire world. The hon. Gentleman talks about GDP, but we had the biggest fall in GDP of any country in the world with the sole exception of Japan.
Mr Osborne
I will give way in a moment, because I want to ask Opposition Members some questions. The House is today asked to support an Opposition motion that would add another £20 billion to the structural deficit. They maintain the fiction that they are sticking with the so-called Darling plan on the deficit—[Interruption.] That is what they say. Does the shadow Chancellor agree?
Mr Osborne
Okay. The motion tears up the Darling plan—it is £27 billion off the plan set out in the March 2010 Budget. That is the truth.
Mr Osborne
I shall give way to the parliamentary private secretary to the former Prime Minister to defend his record.
Alison McGovern
I will defend the record of our former Prime Minister any day of the week, but will the Chancellor defend his own record, and tell the House how far away he is from his deficit payback plan?
Mr Osborne
The hon. Lady has to defend the record of the former Prime Minister because he never turns up in this House to defend it himself.
The one thing that we want to avoid in a debt crisis is a sharp rise in interest rates, but that is what the motion would bring about. Let me give the House some new information.
Mr Osborne
I will give way in a moment. Let me make progress. Do not worry: there will be lots of opportunities for Opposition Members to answer my questions.
I can give the House new information on what just a 1% rise in interest rates would mean for this country at the moment. Such a rise would cost British families an additional £10 billion a year in higher mortgage payments and the British Government an additional £6 billion a year in higher interest costs, and it would increase our net payments to foreign creditors by around £15 billion a year—£15 billion that would leave our economy. Given the sums involved, the impact on family mortgages and small business loans would completely outweigh any fiscal effects of the proposals in the shadow Chancellor’s motion.
Mr Osborne
I said that I would give way in a moment. Labour’s approach would lead to a credit downgrade of this country. The shadow Chancellor shakes his head, but there is no doubt about that any more. This is what the credit rating agency, Standard & Poor’s—[Laughter.] Opposition Members laugh at the credit rating agencies and the need for this country to preserve its triple A credit rating, but Standard & Poor’s says that the ratings would
“come under downward pressure if the Coalition’s commitment to fiscal consolidation falters”.
That is what we would get under Labour: a downgrade to our credit rating, higher interest rates and the economy sent into a tailspin.
Mr Osborne
I give way to the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson).
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Why does the Chancellor give such credence to Standard & Poor’s, which gave triple A ratings to every stupid, risk-taking banker, including those in Northern Rock? Standard & Poor’s advised Northern Rock on one of its products for about a year, and then surprisingly gave Northern Rock a triple A rating. Why should we take any notice of people like that?
Mr Osborne
That, of course, is the attitude of the Labour party. It ignores entirely the views of the world bond markets and the credit rating agencies. That is exactly the approach that got Britain into this economic mess. Because the Government have a credible plan, we are pulling this country out of that mess.
Jesse Norman
Does the Chancellor share my amazement at the lack of reality on the Opposition Benches? The eurozone is in crisis, the credit markets for the banking system across Europe are in desperate straits, and yields are rising, and yet the Opposition would squander £20 billion to £30 billion and increase our deficit.
Mr Osborne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Low interest rates are a precious commodity for the UK at the moment, and Members of the House, sent here to represent their constituents, have to ask themselves, “Do we really want an increase in interest rates at this time?” Is that what we want? It is what the motion would lead to.
Mr Osborne
I shall give way to the member of the Treasury Select Committee, the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) and then the representative of the Scottish National party, the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), and then I shall make some progress.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
How can the Chancellor possibly describe as credible a deficit reduction programme that ends up increasing debt by £46 billion?
Mr Osborne
As I have said, the British structural deficit is coming down because of the measures that we are taking, but the proposal put to the House today would push the budget deficit this year into double figures. No country in the world would consider that a sensible approach at a time such as this for a country such as Britain. It is economic nonsense, and I suspect that the hon. Gentleman knows it.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
I thank the Minister for giving way. He is being very generous. May I take him back to his exchange with the shadow Chancellor on IMF quotes? On 20 September, Monsieur Decressin, the senior adviser to the IMF research department, said that the IMF view was that
“policies in…the UK should only be loosened if growth really threatens to slow down substantially, relative to what we are forecasting. For so long as the forecast seems to pan out, there is no reason to change fiscal plans.”
The IMF has set down a marker for growth and, in effect, said that if it falls substantially, as it is doing, it would accept fiscal loosening. Does the Chancellor recognise that if growth continues to flatline or fall, there is at least an argument for fiscal loosening?
Mr Osborne
The IMF is clear that on its forecasts, which are some of the more pessimistic forecasts for the UK at the moment, it is not recommending a change in policy stance. That is what it says. It is what the managing director has said; what the article 4 report on the UK said; what the OECD is saying; and what all the business organisations in Britain are saying. That is why the path that the shadow Chancellor has laid out for the country is so incredible and does nothing to deal with the problems that he left to the country.
Richard Fuller
In response to the question from the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), I would say that that is not the answer to a debt recession, because a debt recession relies on credibility. One of the key points in the motion is that the Labour party’s so-called plan would provide, through a temporary reverse of the VAT increase, a benefit of £450 for every couple with children. Has the Chancellor worked out the benefit to average families in the country of maintaining the credibility of our country’s finances and ensuring lower interest rates?
Mr Osborne
As I was just explaining, a 1% rise in interest rates—I am not talking about the level of interest rates in Spain and Italy—would mean £10 billion in higher mortgage bills for British families. That is the reality of what the shadow Chancellor is proposing.
Mr Osborne
I shall take the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention, and then I shall make some progress and give way again later.
Ed Balls
The former chief economist at the Cabinet Office, who actually drew up the plan B that the Chancellor then shelved, said in August:
“Low long-term interest rates appear to reflect economic weakness and lack of market confidence in the prospects of the UK economy, not the reverse.”
Is the Chancellor saying that the former chief economist at the Cabinet Office, now head of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, is wrong to say that low interest rates are a sign of lack of confidence and prospects for growth?
Mr Osborne
I am glad that I took that intervention, because the implication is that the shadow Chancellor wants higher interest rates in Britain. That is the revelation we have just heard from him, and it tells us everything about what he is proposing: a catchy five-point plan—the clue is in the title—for a conference speech that would put Britain back at the mercy of the international bond markets, with higher interest rates affecting families and businesses and causing homes to be repossessed and jobs to be lost. We will have no part in it.
Mr Osborne
I have already given way quite a bit. I shall give way again later when I have dealt with this point and when perhaps the shadow Chancellor can answer the questions that I am about to put to him.
Ed Balls
The Chancellor—the Chancellor!—must be the only person in the whole country who thinks that to have Bank of England interest rates at less than 1% for three months is a sign of economic strength, not of the fact that our economy has not grown for a year and that unemployment is rising. The long-term interest rates at the long end of the curve are a reflection of expectations that those interest rates will stay persistently low. The former chief economist said that they
“reflect economic weakness and lack of market confidence in the prospects of the UK economy, not the reverse”.
Is the Chancellor saying that Jonathan Portes, from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, is wrong?
Mr Osborne
My first point is that Jonathan Portes and I have had our disagreements for the past 16 months. He was not my appointment to the Government, but the shadow Chancellor’s, and he is not working for the Government any more. The second thing I want to say is that he cannot have it both ways. He cannot say that Britain is alone in facing these problems, which was the implication of his speech, and then not look at long-term interest rates—or, indeed, the short-term interest rates—in the United States and Germany, which are lower than ours, although we are close to them. [Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor says that they are weak. One of our problems is that the German, US and French economies have ground to a halt. That is why we also need a solution to the eurozone crisis, which has hit all western economies. His idea that Britain is unique in the world in facing these problems is frankly laughable.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
My constituents listening to this will be unable to comprehend all the statistics that the Chancellor is placing in front of us. However, we are missing the human dimension. In Rotherham, for the first time in nearly 20 years, unemployment today rose above 10%. That is taking us back to the south Yorkshire de-industrialisation of the 1980s. We are talking about real people. Does the Chancellor have even the tiniest nanoscintilla of doubt about his policy? He has been in charge for nearly 18 months. Does he have any concerns that perhaps his policy is not working?
Mr Osborne
I am clear that what we are doing is tough but necessary because of the very difficult situation that we inherited. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the impact in south Yorkshire. We inherited a record budget deficit and a bigger recession than in any other country in the world apart from Japan. That is what we are recovering from. Arguably, it was the biggest banking crash in the entire history of the country—at a time when those banks were supposed to have been regulated by the Government of which he was a Minister. That is what we are dealing with. Of course, it is extremely difficult, and many countries are facing problems at the moment, but I think that the steps that we have taken have helped us to weather this global debt storm and kept interest rates low for people in Rotherham. I shall come on to the steps that we can take to ensure that Rotherham does not suffer in the future as it has done in recent years under the Labour Government.
Mr Osborne
I shall make some progress and then take some more interventions.
I shall touch briefly—because we covered this during Monday’s statement—on the situation in the eurozone. I set out on Monday what I felt was needed and what many in the world now feel is needed: we need to ring-fence the eurozone by giving its bail-out fund maximum power; recapitalise Europe’s banks when they are weak; resolve the situation in Greece; and then set out the path to the political and economic changes required to make monetary union work, with greater fiscal integration and improvement in competitiveness on the periphery. I said that Britain wanted no part in the fiscal integration, but that we want to protect our say in the single market, financial services and competition issues. We also want the whole of the UK to become more competitive—with a more complete single market and freer trade.
Since Monday’s statement, we have had the news that the Slovakian Parliament has voted down the proposed changes to the eurozone financial fund—the European financial stability facility—which is clearly a disappointment. We all hope that it will pass in the coming days and urge the Slovakian Parliament to pass it. What has also been disappointing in the past couple of days is the suggestion from the President of the European Commission that Britain should make a direct contribution to eurozone bail-outs. Britain chose not to join the euro and the British Prime Minister has fought hard to get Britain out of the bail-out fund to which the previous Government signed us up. I want to make it clear that whatever the Commission President says, British taxpayers will not be contributing to the eurozone’s bail-out of Greece—full stop. However, we will work with our eurozone partners to help them to resolve the crisis and work with our international partners in institutions such as the IMF to ensure that they have the resources to deal with the problems across the world.
I said that the first thing missing from the shadow Chancellor’s speech was a credible deficit plan, but there was—
Mr Osborne
Let me make just a little bit of progress and then I shall give way.
There was an absolutely staggering second omission from the shadow Chancellor’s speech, which was any reference—I will take an intervention if I have got this wrong—to Labour’s big new economic policy idea, which was unveiled at the Labour conference two weeks ago. I am referring, in case hon. Members have forgotten, to that great plan to divide British businesses into producers and predators—good and bad—and to levy different tax rates on them. Remember the speech from the Labour leader? Did the shadow Chancellor have any part in writing that speech?
Mr Osborne
At last there is something we agree on. It was absolutely the speech that we wanted to hear from the Labour leader at the Labour conference. I want to know what happened to this great idea, which was the centrepiece of Labour’s growth strategy for the new economy. Two weeks later it is not even referred to in the motion that we are being asked to debate. It is like the Lord Lucan of policy ideas: we do not know whether it is dead already or whether it has just gone missing for ever. I was really disappointed, because we know that the shadow Chancellor likes to cover all the policy areas in the shadow Cabinet and I was hoping for an explanation from him about how the idea was going to work. Are we supposed to grow our economy by levying new taxes and regulations on companies owned by private equity firms such as Boots, T-Mobile, the AA, Saga, Somerfield, Legoland and Chessington World of Adventures, those well-known centres of predatory business activity? [Laughter.] It would be laughable if it were not the centrepiece of the Opposition’s economic policy.
Mr Osborne
The Prime Minister gave his speech, which the shadow Chancellor should have paid close attention to, and made it absolutely clear that people are paying off their credit cards—because of the situation that the Labour party has left this country in—but I would ask the shadow Chancellor this question. He had a chance before; will he please mention—just once, in one intervention—the policy of the Labour leader? Come on, just get up and say you support it.
Ed Balls
I think the research and development tax credit to encourage and incentivise investment in research and development was a good thing. I think our proposal to cut national insurance for small companies that take on more employees is a good policy. It was in the Leader of the Opposition’s speech; it was in our five-point plan; it is in the motion—so why do Government Members not vote for it?
Mr Osborne
I guess that is called an “Ed Balls endorsement”—that is what the last Chancellor and Tony Blair got used to. We increased the R and D tax credit for small businesses in the Budget, so we have taken that idea—which we came up with—and introduced it. I am very pleased that the Labour party now supports it, but what about this idea that a Labour Chancellor would sit there in No. 11 with his home-made scales of justice weighing up the companies he likes and those he does not like and levying different levels of tax on them? What happened to that? It was the centrepiece of the Labour conference two weeks ago, and it shows why Labour simply cannot be trusted to run the economy of this country and why it has become the anti-business party again.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
I thank the Chancellor for giving way. It is interesting that he brings up those points, but can he please tell us where the ghost—or the ghoul—of the regional growth fund is? It has now been six months and the north-east is still waiting for the regional growth fund money that it was promised. Businesses are hanging on the wire for that money. Will he please tell us where that cash is?
Mr Osborne
Again, that was another opportunity to talk about Labour’s big economy idea. The hon. Gentleman did not take it, but I am glad that he raised the regional growth fund, which has allocated money to the north-east and other parts of the country. That money is flowing and those projects will get going. We are also setting up enterprise zones in Teesside and Tyneside, and doing what we can to get the north-east economy, which also suffered in recent years, on the front foot, creating private sector jobs so that that region, too, has prosperity.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I am grateful to the Chancellor for giving way. I welcome the work that he and his colleagues are doing on a growth strategy, which he said is needed. A big component of that is the £75 billion of quantitative easing. We are also told that there will be credit easing to get the money into private companies. Will that be on top of the £75 billion injection or within it?
Mr Osborne
It will be on top of the £75 billion. I have not gone through the QE and credit easing policies in detail today because I went through them in the House on Monday, but I would be happy to do so if Members like. QE is an operation undertaken by the Bank of England under the procedures established by my predecessor. The credit easing options that we are looking at involve the Treasury—or rather the Government—using its balance sheet to get money to small businesses either by purchasing securitised small loans, purchasing mid-cap company bonds in the bond market or issuing guarantees through the banking system. All those things currently happen in Britain, but on a very small scale. Our intention is greatly to increase them, and I will set out the proposals in November.
David Wright (Telford) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Chancellor for letting me intervene. Would he be willing to release all the information relating to meetings and discussions that he had with the Governor of the Bank of England on introducing the latest phase of QE, and does he anticipate that we may need more?
Mr Osborne
No, and not even in my memoirs, because the conversations between the Chancellor and the Governor of the Bank of England should be confidential. However, let me make it absolutely clear to the hon. Gentleman that we are talking about an entirely independent decision by the Monetary Policy Committee—not just the Governor of the Bank—and that I followed exactly the procedures established by my predecessor.
Mr Osborne
No, I will make some progress and then perhaps take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman.
We did not hear today about the big Labour idea on the economy that was unveiled two weeks ago. Hitting businesses with more taxes and more regulation at a time like this is absolutely the wrong thing. The way to help businesses to create jobs is to give them competitive tax rates. That is why we have cut corporation tax this year—we have three more cuts to come—and why we have reversed the proposed Labour increase in the small companies tax rate and frozen business rates for all. It is also why we have set up a series of schemes to help unemployed people who have either just lost their jobs or never had a job into the labour market by getting them work. We have launched the biggest back-to-work scheme that the country has seen in 80 years and funded 250,000 more apprenticeships and 100,000 work experience places. Today we have launched the new sector-based work academies to help tens of thousands of young people with training and job interviews. Youth unemployment in this country has been rising since 2004. The last Government did next to nothing to confront it; we are rolling up our sleeves and getting stuck in to sort out this long-term problem for Britain.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Chancellor has been very generous in giving way, although not so generous in actually answering the questions that he has been asked. He has just laid out all the things that he is doing to put things right, yet the economy is flatlining, with record youth unemployment and no growth back in the economy. What is he going to do to improve the situation? Does he not recognise that we cannot just cut the deficit if we do not have growth?
Mr Osborne
We would not have growth if there was a big increase in interest rates. Let us look at other countries in the world that do not have a credible plan to deal with their deficits. Of course this is a difficult time, when many western economies have this problem, but we are taking the tough steps necessary to get the economy going and make it easier for businesses to hire people, which brings me on—
Mr Osborne
I will take interventions in a moment, because I want to know the Labour attitude to these policies that we are proposing.
We are proposing to extend the probation period before a new employee can make an unfair dismissal claim from one to two years. We are also proposing to introduce, for the first time ever, a fee that someone has to pay before they can take a case to an employment tribunal and which they get back if they win. Those are two difficult measures; they are controversial, but they will make it easier and less risky for businesses to hire people. I want to know whether the Labour party will support those measures when they come before the House of Commons. Will it? I want to know whether the right hon. Gentleman will support these things when they come before the House of Commons. Yes or no?
Mr Osborne
It is not going to hit people; it is going to help people into work. I want to know another thing from the shadow Chancellor. I have made it clear that this proposal is going to help people to get into work and help businesses to hire men and women to do jobs without taking the risk that they might bring an unfair dismissal claim within the first couple of years. He kept talking about the Federation of Small Businesses in his speech; it supports the proposal. Does he? It is a simple question. Yes or no?
Mr Osborne
No, no—I am talking about claims for unfair dismissal, and I want to know whether the right hon. Gentleman supports those proposals. This is not about statutory maternity pay; it is about extending the probation period for unfair dismissal.
Here is another question for the Labour party. The trade unions are proposing to go on strike this autumn. That is what they are balloting on. I think everyone in the House would agree that a strike is absolutely the worst thing for the British economy at the moment, and I want to know whether Labour will support that strike or condemn it. Is the shadow Chancellor going to condemn the strike—yes or no? And I do not want any weasel words about a proper negotiation process; I want to know whether, if it comes to a strike, he will condemn it.
Ed Balls
The whole country wants to avoid a strike, but that will require this Chancellor to change his proposals on a deeply unfair 3% rise in pension contributions. We can avoid a strike, but it will require this inflexible Chancellor to do the right thing, not the wrong thing.
Mr Osborne
That is another thing that Labour refuses to condemn. There we have it. We asked the former Labour Work and Pensions Secretary, Lord Hutton, to do a report for us. In his interim report, he set out a case for increased contributions. In his final report, he set out proposals for the defined benefit. We are negotiating on the basis of that. I want to know whether, if it comes to a strike, the people who are paid for by the trade unions are going to condemn trade union activity that would be the wrong thing for the British economy at the moment. Will the shadow Chancellor condemn it?
Bill Esterson
The only people in this country who want a strike are the people sitting on the Government Benches, because they think that they will get a short-term political gain from it. The Chancellor has mentioned interest rates a number of times. Is it not the truth that they, and confidence, are low because the economy has ground to a standstill because of his policies? Will he confirm that?
Mr Osborne
I will tell the hon. Gentleman what would damage confidence: a strike by the trade unions this autumn. Opposition Members are the people who are paid for by the trade unions, and I want to know whether they are going to condemn the strike or not.
Mr Osborne
I will make a bit of progress before I give way.
Not only are we taking measures to make it easier to employ people and putting in place measures to get people back into work—[Interruption.] They are not going to hit women; they are going to help women get into work. We have also announced new investment in local transport links. We are spending more on roads and railways than the last Labour Government did. We have plans for 200,000 new homes, many of them on the back of a new right to buy. We have created two dozen new enterprise zones, and this month committed almost £250 million to world-beating scientific research. That is because, unlike the last Government, we think it is important that things are made in Britain again.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Chancellor has just told us that there have been £31 billion of extra Labour spending pledges—£11 billion from an amendment last week and £20 billion today. Given that we already pay £120 million every day in debt interest, can he tell us how much extra debt interest we would be paying every day if those Labour proposals went through?
Mr Osborne
I have not got that calculation on me, but I will certainly give it to my hon. Friend and use it at a future opportunity, because it is a reminder that this money is coming directly out of the Government coffers in debt interest payments every single day.
Mr Osborne
I will make a little progress, as I know that many people want to speak in the debate.
We have taken steps to try to help people who are facing this difficult situation. We have announced a freeze in council tax, not just this year but next year, and we have taken more than 1 million people out of income tax and delivered an income tax cut for 20 million more. The shadow Chancellor often talks about fairness in paying for all those things, but I want to know why, in all the years that he was chief economic adviser to the previous Government, he blocked and never introduced a permanent bank levy. Why did he never introduce a higher charge for long-staying non-doms? Why did he never conclude a tax treaty with Switzerland to get back some of the money that should be paid into the British Exchequer?
Mr Osborne
I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman after I have made this point. His only achievement in that field was to introduce a capital gains tax regime so riddled with loopholes that some of the richest people in this country boasted about paying less tax than the people who cleaned their houses. Is he proud of that record?
Mr Osborne
The IFS says that child poverty is rising, but the reason it is rising is that the right hon. Gentleman put this country into a complete economic mess. I can see my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions standing at the Bar of the House. He is introducing universal credit, which will do more than any other measure to bring child poverty down, to give opportunities to people who have none at all, and to ensure that work pays. That is what we are doing, and I want to know whether the shadow Chancellor supports that. Does he?
Ed Balls
I support welfare reform—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] Of course I do, but I have to say that I hope the Chancellor will give the Work and Pensions Secretary the money to make it work. The IFS said this week that any gain in child poverty through universal credit would be more than swamped by the Chancellor’s other measures, particularly the change from RPI to CPI, so that the fall in child poverty under Labour would be reversed under the Tories. Is the IFS right?
Mr Osborne
I thought that Labour supported the link to CPI. Is the shadow Chancellor changing his mind on that? In the debates, the Labour party supported the link to CPI, and he has just raised the matter. Has he changed his mind? [Interruption.] Thank God he has a new shadow Chief Secretary to give him the answer.
Ed Balls
We have always said that we would support a temporary rise in CPI during this Parliament, but that we would not support a permanent rise. It is a permanent rise that will see child poverty rising year on year under the Tories. Child poverty fell under Labour; it will rise under the Tories. That tells us everything that we need to know.
Mr Osborne
The shadow Chancellor is all over the place. He was asking me about child poverty numbers in 2012, 2013 and 2014, and he said that, according to the IFS, the principal cause of the rise was a policy to link benefit increases to CPI. That is a policy supported for this Parliament—that is, in 2012, 2013 and 2014—by the Labour Opposition, and it is complete hypocrisy for them to complain about it now. Will the shadow Chancellor confirm that he supports the CPI policy for this Parliament—yes or no?
Mr Osborne
We have kept that target, but the right hon. Gentleman has still not confirmed that—[Interruption.] I welcome the shadow Chief Secretary to her position, but I have to tell her that the shadow Chancellor has just raised with me the question of the IFS estimates on child poverty over this Parliament. The IFS says that one of the principal causes is the policy on the link to CPI. That is the IFS’s view, although universal credit will do a huge amount to offset that impact. It is a policy supported by the Labour party, and it is completely hypocritical of the Labour party to come to this Parliament and raise those statistics and complain about that policy when they said they supported it all along.
Mr Osborne
Let me make a little progress, as I know many Members want to speak.
I shall touch finally and briefly on the last thing missing from the shadow Chancellor’s speech—and we all know what that was. It was an apology for everything that had gone wrong. The right hon. Gentleman has apologised for so many things now—for the worst banking crash in our history, the 10p tax rate, the 75p pensions increase, gold, although I am not sure that he has apologised for that, the feuds in Downing street—yet he still refuses to apologise for spending and borrowing too much. He said that Labour did not spend “more money” than “we had available”, but he missed his golden rule by more than £400 billion. He doubled and then redoubled the national debt. Everyone knows he was spending too much, and everyone has said so. The IFS, since he mentioned it, has said so; Tony Blair has said so; the last Chancellor conceded it in 2007. It is an open secret that half the shadow Cabinet want him to make this apology, but the shadow Chancellor refuses to do it—and we know why. If he did, it would be the final damning indictment of the economic policies he imposed on this country for a decade or more. It would be the final confirmation that his promise to end boom and bust—remember that?—led to the greatest boom and the biggest bust this country has ever seen.
What did we get? No apology; no mention of Labour’s latest economic idea; no credible plan to reduce the deficit. That is why Labour is neither convincing nor credible on the economy. Yes, these are difficult times; yes, this is a global debt crisis. We are dealing with Britain’s record debt problems. We have set out a course to ride through the storm and build a more prosperous future. Today we were reminded that no one, least of all the people who got us into the mess, has produced a convincing alternative to the course we have set.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I inform the House that more than 40 Members wish to participate in this afternoon’s debate, so Mr Speaker has applied an eight-minute time limit to all speeches from the Back Benches from now on.
Mr Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
As the Chancellor has referred to my book—and no doubt others will do so, too—perhaps I should draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
From listening to the Chancellor, it is easy to forget one important fact. When we left office in 2010, our economy was growing; 12 months later, our economy is not growing at all. Growth has stalled, probably for more than a year. Despite everything that the Chancellor and his colleagues said during the last election about its all being the fault of the last Labour Government and nothing to do with global problems or Europe, our economy was growing. Now, 16 months after that general election, while the Chancellor has been in charge and responsible for setting the economic direction, our economy has stopped growing. Even a few months ago people believed that we might see a slow but gradual climb out of recession into growth, but now, right across the world, people are seriously worried that we could be in for a prolonged period of stagnation—at tremendous cost to the country, as today’s unemployment figures show.
Mr Darling
According to Madam Deputy Speaker’s ruling, I have only eight minutes, which means I can give way twice to my benefit; after that, it counts against me. I will, however, give way to the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid).
Sajid Javid
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He said in his recent memoirs that Labour still needs to offer a “clear and viable alternative”. Does he believe that he has heard that today from the shadow Chancellor?
Mr Darling
As we have heard today, the shadow Chancellor and the Labour party are still adopting my policy on the deficit. It was a sensible policy when I first announced it in 2008, and it is still a sensible policy today. The heart of my present argument is that while no one doubts that the deficit has to come down, the judgment to be made is about how fast we bring it down and the risks involved in doing so too fast and ending up crashing the economy. That is the position we have reached today.
It is interesting that the International Monetary Fund has been much discussed this afternoon. It is worth reading what the IMF and Christine Lagarde, who talks a lot of sense on these issues, have been saying. Of course the IMF is always going to be wary of taking on one of its principal shareholders, but we do not have to read too far between the lines to see what the IMF is saying. It is saying quite clearly that there is now a serious risk of a slow-down in major economies, including our own, which will result in not less but more borrowing, and economies stagnating.
It is also interesting that when the Bank of England announced last week further measures of quantitative easing, which I support, it did so against a completely different background from its first announcement in 2009. The Bank is now worried about what is happening in Europe, which means that the economy is slowing down. The Bank is seriously worried about the lack of growth. The QE announcement last week is just the beginning of what might be called plan B or even plan 1A, because the Bank is worried. That is why it is changing direction.
I was pleased to hear the Chancellor talking about credit easing for businesses on top of the £75 billion. Surely that is at least some recognition of the fact that the plan he announced with so much confidence last summer, which was going to do so much to reduce our borrowing, is not working. He has to adapt it and my bet is that—whether it be in the autumn statement in a month’s time or in next year’s Budget—we will see more measures that acknowledge that the policy pursued by this Government is simply not working. If we do not change it, we will pay a very heavy price.
Mr Darling
I will gain another minute by giving way to the hon. Gentleman, so I will do so.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am grateful. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us how he voted in the IMF subscription vote?
Mr Darling
I have always made my position clear. One of the big achievements of April’s G20 meeting, led by the then Prime Minister my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), was to get countries to sign up to an increase in IMF funding. That has always been my position, and I am not going to depart from it because I believe that the IMF has a central role to play. With respect to the hon. Gentleman, his intervention does not get him off the central point of this debate, which is what is different now from the position when we left office. My deficit reduction plan was on the back of an economy that had started to grow, so my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor is quite right to ask himself what we need to do now, 16 months later, when economic growth has stalled, and what other measures are necessary to get the economy going.
My right hon. Friend is also quite right to say that, although a few months ago very few people were talking about the need to reduce taxes, bring forward capital spending or take measures to help businesses, that has now become common currency among many commentators. It is only the present Government who simply do not accept that the plan they announced 16 months ago is not working. As my right hon. Friend said, the Chancellor has had to downgrade his growth forecast four times. I remember his having great fun at my expense when saying that my growth forecasts were wrong. Actually, mine lasted a lot longer than his. He should reflect on that and on the fact that he is having to borrow more.
I raised another point about quantitative easing with the Chancellor on Monday and I hope we will hear more about it. If that money does not leave the vaults of the banks and get out on to the high streets, it will have failed. I know that the Chancellor has had exactly the same trouble with the Bank of England as I had. I could not persuade it to buy corporate assets; he has obviously failed as well, which is why he has had to think up his own scheme. We really need to get that money out on to the high streets; if it is not manifested in the form of loans to businesses, it will simply not work.
I note that the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) is no longer in his place. He said that quantitative easing works only when there is a credible policy. Given that the Bank of England has said that it worked, we must have had a credible policy at the time. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not here to hear that; he might want to ponder it when he reads Hansard tomorrow morning, as I am sure he will. The Chancellor needs to ensure that the money gets out on to the high street; otherwise, it will fail. It is remarkable that the Bank of England is almost now doing what the Government should be doing. It recognises that the policy is not working, which is why it has embarked on another round of quantitative easing.
The Chancellor is fond of saying that all our problems are on account of the eurozone. That, too, is remarkable. When he came into office, the Tory story, backed by the Liberal Democrats, was that it was all the fault of the last Labour Government. All was fine with the rest of the world, so it was just Labour’s overspending that was responsible. Incidentally, the Chancellor supported it right up to the end of 2008 and the Liberal Democrats supported it until the day after the general election, so it could not have all have been wrong at that stage. Now they are saying that the problem is not domestic at all; that it is all to do with what is happening in the eurozone.
Of course the eurozone is a major problem and it is becoming a bigger one by the day. I hope the Chancellor was right when he said at the beginning of the week that wiser counsels are prevailing in Europe, but I am not so sure. We should remember this: although people talk about the fact that the German Parliament ratified the deal a couple of weeks ago—and Slovakia will probably put it through later this week—it was in fact agreed in July, and it is blindingly obvious that it is now out of date. At that time no one would talk about Greek default, whereas now everyone knows that Greece will default, and the only question is whether it will be done in a managed way or become a disorderly breakdown.
Another thing that is obvious—the Chancellor acknowledged this on Monday—is that the austerity measures being imposed on Greece simply are not working. Greece is reaching a point at which it is unlikely to be able to repay the interest on its borrowing, let alone reduce its borrowing and debt. The policy of austerity endorsed by far too many European countries over the last 16 months or so worked at first, but it is not working now, and Greece is living proof of that.
I hope that something compelling and convincing will be agreed at the G20 in a couple of weeks’ time, but I have my doubts. The trouble with the eurozone countries is that they are still fighting as though nothing has changed since the early summer, which has been their position since the early part of 2009. If we have any influence I hope that we will bring it to bear. If we do not, there is a risk, as the Chancellor himself recognises, that if things go wrong in the eurozone they will affect this country. While I agree with the Chancellor that we should certainly should not contribute to the bailing out of the eurozone, he is also right to say that a break-up of the euro at the present time is the last thing that the world economy needs, ourselves included.
That brings me to our policies back at home. I have always believed that reducing public expenditure at such a rate, in a climate in which the private sector is not taking its place, risks crashing the economy. I reached that view when my party was in office, and I still hold it today. The evidence seems to suggest that that is precisely what is happening now, and that is why it is so damaging.
Mr Darling
I will not, because it will count against me if I give way again.
I hope that the Chancellor will produce measures to deal with the situation. He may wish to embark on infrastructure projects, although in my experience that is much easier said than done, and the interval between making a plan and putting a shovel into the ground can be a long one. Some of the road schemes that the Chancellor mentioned were planned by the Labour Government—one of them back in the 1970s—so we should not get too carried away about them. However, he should certainly introduce the tax reductions and other measures to help businesses to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) ascribed such importance.
It is clear to me that we cannot resign ourselves to circumstances in which people feel that nothing can be done, that it is all inevitable, and that nature must take its course. Governments can make a difference—they made a difference two years ago at the G20 in 2009—but we currently have no international leadership, and we have precious little leadership from our own Government when it comes to what we should be doing in this country. There is, and there must be, an urgency attached to getting these things right, but that means a change of policy here at home as well.
Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)
This debate about growth contains three distinct components, although, of course, there are close connections between them: the strategy to stabilise the public finances, the strategy to secure recovery, and the strategy to raise the long-run growth rate. I want to say a little about each of those.
There has been a fair amount of partisan politics around today, and I do not intend to add to it unless severely provoked. As I have said in the House a number of times before, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) deserves considerable credit for his March 2010 Budget, with its plans for sharp cuts in spending and borrowing. Equally, the coalition deserves credit for its own plans. Our present low debt service costs speak for themselves. They reflect the credibility invested by markets in the deficit reduction strategy and the belief that the coalition will stick with it, and the country will be the beneficiary of that.
As for policies to secure recovery, we can all agree that, given the eurozone crisis, the international economic outlook is much worse than forecast either by the right hon. Gentleman in his Budget 18 months ago or by the Office for Budget Responsibility this spring, and I am sure more surprises will follow. However, it is not true that the Government are doing nothing in response, as the right hon. Gentleman implied. They have rightly adapted to the situation, and the recovery strategy has changed. The Bank of England has adapted by announcing the second tranche of quantitative easing, and the Chancellor will adapt by announcing credit easing in his autumn statement.
I strongly endorse the Chancellor’s decision to favour monetary policy as the short-term tool rather than tinkering with tax changes, which is what is proposed in the five-point plan. I am sure that the Treasury Committee will want to examine exactly how the Government have changed their policy on the recovery strategy and whether QE2 and credit easing are the best tools, but I think everybody can agree that it was timely to take action. We can also agree that British taxpayers should not be asked to contribute to any further eurozone bail-out.
John Mann
History shows that the use of monetary policy has invariably led to an increase in inflation, which has sometimes been a hidden deliberate policy aim. Regardless of whether it is a good or a bad policy, does the hon. Gentleman expect an upward drift of inflation as the conclusion to the way in which monetary policy is currently being used?
Mr Tyrie
I will not answer that at any length, except to say that I am of course making my points in a personal capacity, because as a Committee we may comment on growth after the autumn statement. Let me also point out that the Governor gave a comprehensive reply to the hon. Gentleman’s question when he introduced the second £75 billion tranche of measures. He pointed out that money demand was extremely low at present, and that therefore he thought that the risk of inflation over the next two to three years was extremely low.
Mr Brazier
As well as monetary pressure being extremely low at present, some of the larger ticket items such as commercial and domestic property which are outside the usually looked at measures such as CPI and RPI have been going down rather than up.
Mr Tyrie
I broadly agree with that. There is always a problem with measuring inflation—there is always a dispute about exactly how to capture it best—and we will never get it exactly right. I will not go into any further details now, but I agree with the core of what my hon. Friend has said.
Work on both the deficit reduction plan and the recovery plan have been firefighting to deal with our inheritance—less from the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West than from his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). Let me now deal with the third aspect of the growth strategy, which consists of policies to improve the long-run growth rate and long-run economic performance: what the policy wonks call supply-side reform. The coalition's inheritance needed attention in that regard as well.
A few days ago I made a number of proposals for supply-side reform in a pamphlet, and they seemed to make everyone very excited. The Government growth agenda set out in the spring was a start, but, as the Chancellor said in his party conference speech,
“We need to do more”.
In that pamphlet, in a personal capacity, I made a few suggestions. In a nutshell, we need to work much harder to produce a comprehensive strategy embracing tax, reform of the labour markets, financial regulation, energy policy, transport and competition policy. We have been firefighting so far, but now is the time to start developing that longer-term strategy.
It is worth bearing in mind that it took the Thatcher Administration the best part of four years to get round to doing much of this, and I realise that this type of policy is easy to talk about but difficult to deliver. What matters most is that the creative energies of small businesses in our constituencies are released to increase the long-run growth potential of the economy. That is a big reform job. We have to bear in mind all the time that it involves millions of people—small traders and people working in small businesses—and that it is they who will restore the economy to health, not Governments and not Parliament. We need to make it much easier for them. Let us consider just one area: taxation. The Treasury Committee has flagged up some of the—largely inherited—contradictions and inconsistencies in the tax system, and argues that further tax reforms should be based on a few simple and coherent principles: certainty, simplicity, stability and fairness. We are a long way from achieving that in our tax system and there is a lot still to do. Encouragingly, the Chancellor said he strongly supported tax simplification; he has made that point on a number of occasions and he has created the Office of Tax Simplification.
The Chancellor announced in his speech at last week’s Conservative party conference that he would push ahead with further labour market reforms, and he has mentioned that again today. Of even greater significance could be the Chancellor’s commitment not to push ahead of other European countries on carbon reduction targets. I and many other people have been arguing for that for a long time, all the way back to our deliberations on the Climate Change Act 2008. The rapid pace of carbon reduction will push up business costs and also provoke great controversy, for example in respect of wind farms. Therefore, the Government are right to think again about that policy. It is now crucial that the coming autumn statement gives a decisive push to measures for improving long-run economic performance. It is equally important that that is seen not as a programme for a year, but as a remorseless project for the long term.
For much of the last decade, politicians of both major parties talked as if the economy need no longer be the top priority. For it was an age of abundance: it seemed that we could concentrate on how to spend it and quality-of-life issues. We forgot that most politics is hot air unless the economy can afford to deliver on the promises made by politicians. The complacency about growth that infected both parties encouraged the irresponsible lending and borrowing of the last decade. The electorate have noticed that they were led up the garden path, most notably by the absurd claim that Governments could put an end to boom and bust—so my final point is a presentational one. Politicians and Parliament must demonstrate that the public’s No. 1 priority is also their own No. 1 priority. The electorate’s No. 1 priority at present is to protect their living standards and their children’s prospects.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I now have to announce the result of the deferred Division on the question relating to tribunals and inquiries. The Ayes were 309 and the Noes were 20, so the Ayes have it.
[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
This Government’s refusal thus far to countenance a plan B will come back to haunt the Chancellor, the Chief Secretary and the Prime Minister. The current plan to remove the entire structural deficit in the fixed time scale of a single Parliament was incredibly risky to start with, and now appears almost impossible. It was dependent on export growth from a strong eurozone, which is not there. To be fair, the overall trade figures are a little better this year: the balance of trade is £9 billion in the red for the first quarter, but in the second quarter it stood at £24 billion in the red, and the aggregate for the first two quarters is almost as much as last year’s catastrophic £99 billion deficit in the trade in goods out-turn.
The Government’s plan depended on business investment growth of a rather heroic 8% to 11% each and every year, but that is not there either. Indeed, the gross fixed capital investment figures for this year show that investment fell by 2% in the first quarter and is lower than in the same quarter in 2010. Growth is now effectively flatlining, and although borrowing was down between April and August, it is up between August this year and August last year and is forecast to be as much as £46 billion greater. Therefore, something needs to change, not least because according to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research it is likely that the entire consolidation plan will cut almost an entire percentage point off GDP growth this year. It has said that
“it remains our view that in the short term fiscal policy is too tight, and a modest loosening would improve prospects for output and employment with little or no negative effect on fiscal credibility.”
If the Government are concerned, as they would be right to be, about the credibility of their plan and if others are saying that a modest loosening, which would help growth, would have no impact on the credibility of the plan, they should listen, not least because if they do not, the entire deficit reduction strategy is at risk, as the NIESR suggests.
On 2 August, the NIESR said that if things go on as they are:
“The Chancellor will miss his primary target of balancing the cyclically adjusted current budget by…around 1 per cent of GDP.”
Perhaps the Chancellor has listened and perhaps that is what he was alluding to in his statement on 11 August when he said that we should be “realistic” about the dangers in the global economy and “set our expectations accordingly.” I pressed him at the time on that and he was not very forthcoming. If he is to change his expectations, he is, as the previous Chancellor said, going to have to change his policy as well.
Richard Graham
The Opposition motion, which the hon. Gentleman presumably supports, focuses very much on a plan for jobs and growth. I would like to share with him some statistics that I found with the help of the Library. They show that between 1997 and 2010, when the shadow Chancellor was the previous Government’s chief economic adviser, the number of jobs in business in my constituency shrank by 5,600, or by 13% of the employment work force in the entire constituency. From what I have heard today, plan B really amounts to adding more mortgage costs for families and doing nothing for growth of jobs in the business sector. This Government are doing a lot to help that with structural change. Does he agree?
Stewart Hosie
We believe that there has to be a change because this plan is not working. That will involve: direct capital investment, which we know does work, and I shall come on to that; consumer confidence, which is vital; and access to bank finance. The Labour Opposition’s motion is a good tactic to debate this matter and we will back it, because in principle we want to see something done. However, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will concentrate on my proposals.
I have said that there are problems with the Government’s plans. This has not just been about the absence of a strong eurozone to export to or of heroic rates of business investment; it has been about the fact that the forecast rates of growth for this and the next years of 2.3%, 2.8%, 2.9%, 2.7% and 2.7%, as set out in the 2010 Budget, will not be achieved. Indeed, Robert Chote, the head of the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, said that even to achieve a 1.7% growth rate now would require
“quarter-on-quarter growth rates of 1%...and there aren’t many people out there expecting that.”
I suspect that there are no people in here expecting that.
So the Chancellor needs to stimulate now, and the best way of doing so is through direct capital investment. As we know, the OBR has said that the impact multiplier for this is 1:1. It is the most effective form of stimulus that the Government have and they should use it. It is also the area where the Government can make the most damaging cut. I know that he wants to tell me that they are keeping £2 billion more in direct capital investment than Labour planned, but very large cuts are still being made. It was not just the OBR saying this, as the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association was doing so too. On 23 September, it cited the OBR’s view that
“boosting capital spending is a far more effective way of boosting GDP than cutting VAT, tweaking welfare entitlements or increasing current spending. In fact, the OBR’s multiplier on capital spending is one-for-one…This means that the Government could increase capital spending and still deliver the planned reduction in net debt as a share of GDP.”
So again, there is no lack of credibility in changing policy and there is no impact in the planned reduction of net debt as a share of GDP in changing the policy.
The BVCA goes on to say:
“There are other good reasons for targeting infrastructure. The dramatic cuts to the investment budget that were pushed through last year will weigh substantially on private sector productivity in the years ahead. Capital spending is due to be cut by about a third in cash terms between FY09/10 and FY15/16, implying an even larger real decline.”
So if the UK Government really are serious about private sector growth in the medium and long term, they should be very concerned that a body such as the BVCA is prepared to say that cuts now will weigh substantially on private sector productivity in the years ahead. Of course, its key point is not even that. It states that
“in order to have an immediate impact on activity, the Government would need to start spending money straight away. That could mean dusting off some previously shelved plans, as there is no point in waiting 12 months”—
I think it is right—
“for any boost to be felt.”
That is good advice and I hope the Chancellor is listening.
The Chancellor does not need to focus only on capital investment. He needs to ensure proper access to business finance and that the £75 billion of quantitative and credit easing hits the real economy. Evidence from Japan suggests that bank lending fell during the whole quantitative easing exercise, and evidence here shows that between February 2009 and January 2010, when £200 billion of QE was issued, bank lending fell month on month and has remained below the starting point in every month since. That is extremely damaging. This time, the Chancellor must ensure that that money does not go through a pipe to the banks to pack balance sheets but touches the edges and hits the real economy.
Stewart Hosie
That is absolutely right. I heard the Chancellor say this week that he has considered how the Government might fund business investment directly. There is merit in that. I am prepared to give this term of QE and the credit easing a chance to work, but I tell the Chancellor that if the £75 billion-plus of new electronic money goes to the banks or is used to buy back Government debt and does not hit the real economy, neither the banks nor the Government will be forgiven this time if it fails. Too many businesses are hurting due to a lack of business finance.
Stewart Hosie
No, I shall stick to the same adage as everyone else and give way twice.
The third thing that needs to be done is to restore consumer confidence and economic security. Fundamentally, that means keeping people in their jobs, and Government and their agencies remain responsible for plenty of jobs. That means that pay policy in the public sector should bring down the salaries of senior people, bonuses should be removed from senior public servants, there should be temporary pay freezes for those on average incomes, help should be provided for those earning under £21,000 and specialist systems and a working wage should be introduced for those earning least of all. However, it also means delivering a no-compulsory-redundancy policy for staff employed by Government, the NHS and the other public bodies when agreement can be reached. We know that this plan—a mix of direct capital investment, confidence, and improved business finance or taking some of the burden off businesses—can work. We have seen it in Scotland, where even with the unemployment figures published today, unemployment is lower, employment is higher and economic inactivity is lower.
We know that such a mix of activity can work and, of course, it is broadly in line with what Christine Lagarde called for in September, when she said that
“countries must act now—and act boldly—to steer their economies through this dangerous new phase of the recovery”.
It also mirrors her comment in August to the Financial Times when she said that
“short-term measures must be supportive of growth, yet economical in terms of the impact on fiscal sustainability, and can include policies supporting employment creation, advancing planned infrastructure and easing adjustment in housing markets.”
There is no reason, other than dogma, not to follow the ideas laid out by those on the Opposition Benches today to kick the economy out of its torpor. I urge the Chancellor to use his autumn statement to do just that. He can call it plan A-plus, he can call it plan B, but he must change, develop and deliver quickly.
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)
I remind the House of my interest recorded in the register.
There is some common ground on both sides of the House. Growth is the key, and although the Government cannot create jobs and businesses, they can set the conditions for sustainable growth through sound money, a fair and competitive tax system, an infrastructure in which businesses can flourish and, above all, keeping control of their side of the economy—the public finances. The previous Government clearly failed to do that. They failed to balance their budget for nine successive years after 2001 and they doubled then redoubled the national debt, leaving us with the largest structural deficit in the G20. Worse still, for the longer term, they left us a rate of growth that simply was not sustainable because it depended on ever-increasing public expenditure—now, I note, more than 50% of GDP for the third year running—on a boom in commercial and residential property prices that simply was not viable in the longer term, and on an over-blown banking and financial sector. We are now dealing with the consequences of the collapse of that sector.
In the end, it was all an illusion. The previous Government created a pyramid of debt and called it investment. They spent all our money on an unreformed public sector without bringing the improvements in productivity that we saw over the same period in the private sector. On the capital side, they spent it on a whole series of expensively engineered, private finance arranged schools, hospitals and the rest. Above all, as was sadly confirmed yet again today, they left us a lost generation of nearly 1 million youngsters under the age of 25 who were under-educated, underskilled and under-equipped for the needs of modern business. That is why I support a Government who are now laying the proper foundations for genuine growth on top of their fiscal consolidation plan by encouraging bank lending, cutting taxes on business and cutting regulation.
I particularly welcome the announcement made by the Chancellor in Manchester, which he repeated today, about reforming the rules regarding employment tribunals, which will make employment easier. That is one reason why I support it—another is because it will reduce the huge cost to business not only of the awards themselves but of the time taken to manage and handle cases that businesses would prefer not to get to tribunal. I also support it because it is fundamentally, as the Chancellor has emphasised this afternoon, a deregulatory measure that recognises the rights of non-workers—those who are currently frozen out of the labour market but would be prepared to work if businesses found it easier to take them on.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
We are being asked to accept that all small businesses that might take on employees have as their first consideration the possibility of being faced with an industrial tribunal, but, of course, if they are good employers, that is most unlikely to happen. Surely, the fact that they cannot sell their products if there is no demand for them because so many people are unemployed or feel at risk of unemployment, rather than whether they might be faced with an industrial tribunal, is the most important consideration for an employer in deciding whether to take on another employee.
Michael Fallon
Employers in my constituency tell me that they will do almost anything to avoid taking on any single additional member of staff. The hon. Lady has to recognise that the number of cases jumped to a quarter of a million in 2009-10. I welcome the change.
I hope that there might be agreement across the House on my next point. The two things that seem to be missing at the moment in our quest for growth are cash and confidence. I fully support what the Government are doing to encourage bank lending. It beggars belief that there was no agreement in place with the banks to stimulate lending to small businesses before the Merlin agreement was concluded this year. I support that agreement, but I also share the scepticism of the Chancellor and the former Chancellor about the stimulus that the first round of quantitative easing may or may not have given to bank lending. The jury seems to be out on that, but what it does seem to have stimulated is inflation. The Bank now admits, I think, that it may have added between 0.75% and 1.5% to consumer price inflation. Two years ago, consumer price inflation was 1.1%, whereas today it is four times that. I hope that the Bank will be mindful, if there is an inflationary effect, that inflation is already higher than we would like. If there is a squeezed middle, inflation is doing quite a bit of the squeezing, and I hope that the Bank will not forget its core task of getting inflation back on target.
In the end, confidence is the key. I hope that the Government will do everything that they can to back the companies that are successful, and to learn from their success.
Michael Fallon
I will not, if the hon. Gentleman will excuse me.
I visited a small business in my constituency that I want to tell the House about. It is called Rotosound and—I say this for colleagues who play guitar or other stringed instruments—it is the prime maker of guitar strings. It sells them not only throughout the United Kingdom, but to 60 countries around the world, and it is one of our great success stories. It sold guitar strings that were used by Jimi Hendrix, The Who and many other bands. It sells them to China, which could quite easily make its own guitar strings, probably more cheaply. People in China choose to buy our guitar strings because they are associated with one of our most successful industries—popular music—and because they are British. We need to distil the essence of successful exporters such as that company. The Government need to find the secret of those companies and do everything possible to back more of them if we are to deliver the jobs that our young people need.
It is clear from the debate so far, and certainly from the Chancellor’s speech, that only this Government can help to deliver the growth that the economy needs by laying the proper foundations for our fiscal consolidation, so that we get the modern economy that we need growing successfully again.
Mr George Mudie (Leeds East) (Lab)
I am delighted to see the Chancellor still in his place. Oh, he is just going. I have that effect on him. I think he has heard enough in the previous four speeches, three of which were by members of the Treasury Committee—its best members; the rest are coming now. The last four speeches were very thoughtful, in contrast with what happened when the two Front Benchers had a go at one another. The public must see that as the Chamber at its worst; it was described as vaudeville. That is not the fault of the individuals concerned; it is the way this place is.
Following on from the speeches of the Front Benchers were speeches from the former Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling); the Chairman of the Select Committee; the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), who represents the seat in which I was born; and my good friend from the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon). They were very good speeches, but that contrasts with what we heard before them, which is sad, in a way.
Two kinds of people watch the parliamentary channel during the day. There are people who will find the Front-Bench speeches lovely, because they are party animals of either party, and they like the cut and thrust, but there are also 100,000-odd additional people who are, or could be, looking at that channel: those who, in the last year—in the last quarter or month—have lost their job. Almost a million youngsters between 16 and 24 are out of work; they could be watching that channel, hoping that they will see that action will be taken to get them a job. They will have been despairing, until the last four speeches.
The hon. Member for Sevenoaks said that he saw some common ground. I think that there is some, inasmuch as whatever the bluster, something is clear after 15 months: cutting the deficit at the speed first suggested, backed up by a lack of a coherent growth policy—there was no growth policy; a document was hatched and brought forward six months later as an autumn statement—meant that the people watching knew that we were going to have a hard time. This debate will be an achievement if there is any acceptance in the Chamber that we cannot do what we have been doing for the past 15 months, but must do something additional—something different—because what we have been doing is not working. There are signs of that. The fact that the Chancellor went to the Bank of England and asked for credit easing to be done through the Bank, which was refused, and the fact that he is now taking the steps to do it himself, is good—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Will the hon. Gentleman please make his comments through the Chair?
Mr Mudie
Shall I start again, Mr Deputy Speaker? You have put me off. Can you remind me where I was?
The Chancellor was turned by the Governor, but he was treated very well by the House because he had spent half an hour saying that he would not spend money. He now has the job for the next two months, until the autumn statement, of making a reality of credit easing, which means that because the Governor will not do it from the Bank of England, it will have to be done by the Government through public expenditure. And that, from a man who was saying that there is too much public expenditure and the only way is to cut, is a major achievement and a major philosophical breakthrough.
There are clear signs that the Chancellor realises that he boxed himself in. It was described three or four months ago on a radio programme as flexibility—“I have flexibility in my programmes”. That would give him the ability to move off plan A, but it is now clear that he is moving off with a vengeance because he sees the danger. When we in the House speak about growth, that means a lot to politicians, but the ordinary person does not realise that it means their job, the security of their home and their income. If the Chancellor is moving on that, it is very good.
I shall put three suggestions on the table for the Chancellor. First, he could reconsider the disastrous decision to abolish regional development agencies and the disgraceful decision to give the local enterprise partnerships that he set up in their place less money, no staff, no powers, no authority and no influence. They have pulled together in every area in the country schemes that have been presented to Lord Heseltine to filter out and put forward for funding. As only one scheme has come from each area, there is a whole list of good schemes sitting on the table that could be put into operation.
Secondly, when we speak about infrastructure, we invariably go to roads. The key, however, is housing because it triggers so many additional jobs and so much additional expenditure. There is one thing the Chancellor could do without spending any money. I know there is a balance. An average two-bedroom house costs £160,000. To get a mortgage requires a deposit of £32,000. Need we look any further to understand why youngsters are not buying houses? I know we have to protect people from being irresponsible, but such a value-to-loan ratio has knocked house purchase off the table. As we are not building social housing, it is a real block. Perhaps the Chancellor could speak to the Financial Services Authority and to the banks and say, “Ease off and look at each case on its merits.”
Finally, during the 1980s recession we had some very good community programmes—youth training schemes and so on. They were sometimes derided but they kept youngsters at work and gave them some self-belief and purpose. Youngsters got up and turned up on time. The schemes prepared them for work and kept them intact as individuals. In Leeds we had 2,500 places and we did enormous work across the city with unemployed people who, to this day, pay tribute to the fact that such schemes kept them going when they would have disintegrated as personalities if they had not had that discipline and chance. I should like the Chancellor to think about those.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
I confess that as I listened to the shadow Chancellor this afternoon, I almost felt a growing sense of admiration for the sheer effrontery of the man. This man who came to deliver a lesson to the Chancellor was personally responsible for much of the economic mess that the country now finds itself in. He, of course, is no longer in his place, but I wonder whether I might give a quick economic history lesson to those Members on the Opposition Front Bench who have hung around to listen to the debate.
In 1997 this country had a national debt of £350 billion and was basically spending what it earned. By May 2008, well before the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the banking problems, the national debt had already increased to £629 billion and the Government, during the boom times, had run a deficit of around £30 billion a year. I am yet to hear any Opposition Member explain why, when the country was booming, they spent £30 billion a year more than the country was taking in taxes. Once we hit the banking problems, which the previous Government successfully blamed all the economic problems on, the debt skyrocketed to £1 trillion.
Of course, even that is not the full story, because many sensible economists claim that the national debt is at least twice as large, as the figures used do not take into account the PFI contracts used for all the schools and hospitals that the previous Government built but never paid for. It does not take account of the liabilities for organisations such as Railtrack and Metronet, and of course it takes no account of public sector pensions. The reality is that we must now deal with a debt of at least £1 trillion and the deficit of £160 billion that we inherited.
Opposition Members like to blame it all on the banks. “It was all the fault of the wicked bankers”, they say. I have done a little checking with the House of Commons Library, and as far as I can ascertain the banks received £100 billion. That money was given out not simply in cash, but in shares and the rest of it, so a lot of it might come back to us. If we take the best-case scenario for the national debt, which is £1 trillion, rather than the £2 trillion suggested by many economists, and the worst-case scenario for the £100 billion that was given to the banks, which is that nothing will come back, even then that money accounts for only 10% of the national debt. What about the other £900 billion? When will the Opposition start accounting for that?
One trillion pounds is a lot of money. I was thinking about it earlier and trying to put it in perspective. If we were to create a graph and used 1 cm to show £1 million, it would have to stretch all the way from here to Highgate cemetery to show the scale of the wanton spending for which Opposition Members are responsible—I do not know whether it is relevant, but that is the burial place of Karl Marx.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman knows what the public sector debt was in 1997 and in 2007 before the recession.
David T. C. Davies
Has the hon. Lady finished now, and may I continue? I am always fascinated by the fact that comparisons are made between levels of debt as a percentage of GDP. I will certainly give way again if someone can explain why we compare national debt with GDP. Why do we not do what any company would do and compare it with revenue? If we look at a comparison with 2010, when this Government took over and when the national debt was £1 trillion, we will see that the revenue coming in was £520 billion. The country had a national debt that was almost twice the revenue it was taking. Anyone who has run a company—most Opposition Members have not, but I have—will know that any company that found itself in such a situation would be declared bankrupt immediately.
Kwasi Kwarteng
Will my hon. Friend remind the House why the previous Labour Government ran a deficit for nine consecutive years from 2001 to 2010, despite having a boom?
David T. C. Davies
My hon. Friend asks a very good question. They managed to come up with an excuse after 2008, following the collapse of the banks, but as I said earlier, I am yet to hear an answer on why they ran a deficit from 2001 to 2008. Perhaps we will get one later.
What I did hear from the shadow Chancellor was some rather mealy-mouthed insults directed towards my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who had a proper job outside politics and Government, as I did, which the shadow Chancellor seems to think is worth mocking him for. My right hon. Friend was not the man who was responsible for the £1 trillion-worth of debt, for selling gold at a fraction of the price, or for running up deficits in boom years. [Interruption.] I will not say anything about the euro at the moment, but there are many Labour Members who were urging us to the join the euro during those times and are now trying to give us a lesson in economics. I notice that they have all now gone very quiet.
The reality is that Labour Members never, ever learn their lesson. For them, it is not a case of plan A or plan B; there is only one plan: “Let’s tax people as highly as we can, and when we’ve finished squeezing every penny out of them, we’ll borrow more money.” They do not remember the words of one Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer during a Labour conference: “Comrades, you may think that we can tax and spend our way out of a recession, but I tell you that is no longer an option.” They still have not learned the lesson.
Clement Attlee failed in the 1940s when he tried to build his welfare state on the back of American war loans. There was Harold Wilson in the 1960s telling the public that the pound in their pocket was worth the same when he was rapidly devaluing it. Then there was Jim “Crisis, what crisis?” Callaghan, who, just like his successors, brought the country to the brink of utter bankruptcy, and did not even seem to think that he had done anything wrong. It was 18 years before they got another chance, and they have done exactly the same thing again: tax and spend, borrow and spend, just keep on doing it and do not worry about it.
I am glad that we have a Government who are not going to go for the easy option, which would be to borrow a whole load more money now in the hope of winning an election, which is exactly what Labour Members were doing for a couple of years. We are going to take some tough decisions, and that means getting our books in order. Unlike the shadow Chancellor, I know, having run a small family haulage business, that one cannot carry on spending more money than one gets indefinitely. I welcome the fact that the Chancellor is going to encourage real growth by making it easier for businesses to take people on and not have to worry about employment tribunals, which anyone who has run a small business does worry about all the time because of the number of spurious claims.
David T. C. Davies
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has ever had any experience of running a business or dealing with spurious employment tribunals—I very much doubt it.
I am also glad that the Chancellor has recognised that reducing our carbon emissions at a time when the economy is facing problems is not necessarily the wisest thing to do, particularly when the Government are now having to accept that our winters are getting colder, that more people are dying through cold than through heat, and that the link between carbon dioxide and global warming is not quite as clear-cut as many people say.
David T. C. Davies
I will not give way again, because I have done so twice and I do not want to cut myself off.
I congratulate the Chancellor and all his colleagues in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties and urge them to stay the course, to ensure that we spend what we earn, and not to listen to Labour Members or take any notice of people such as the former Prime Minister. Even he did not seem to know the difference between debt and deficit, because anyone who looks at the YouTube video of him abusing Mrs Duffy and calling her a bigot will notice that halfway through he said, “We will cut the debt in half.” Did he not know the difference between debt and deficit, or was he planning much deeper cuts than the coalition Government? Perhaps someone will answer that question.
All Back Benchers on this side of the House are supportive of the Government because we recognise, as we always have, that it is not possible to carry on spending money that one does not have because that merely creates a bigger problem further down the line for our children. That is why I urge my colleagues to stay the course.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
As ever, it gives me great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), who talks about learning lessons. Following the erudite economic contributions that we have heard from many hon. Members, I am going to talk about the real lessons of human life in my constituency.
First, let me give some numbers. Over the past year, claims for jobseeker’s allowance in London increased by 10%, compared with the UK as a whole at 8%. Those figures are pretty bad, and today’s unemployment statistics underline the general trend. In my constituency, the figure increased by 18%. If one looks more closely, it gets worse. The number of claimants under the age of 24 increased by 18.1% in the past year, and for someone who is over 50 the outlook is bleak. The increase in the number of claimants in that group was 29.2%. That is right—nearly a third more over-50s are seeking work than a year ago.
I will focus on people and their lives, and on the families who are affected by this Government’s policies. About one in three residents in the borough of Hackney, which I represent with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), are under the age of 24. Therefore, as well as the percentage increases, a significant number of young people in both constituencies are affected by the Government’s reckless programme.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady explain how abandoning our deficit reduction plans, losing our triple A credit rating, and forcing up interest rates to UK plc, homeowners and business will lower unemployment?
Meg Hillier
That question demonstrates the detachment of this Government and their Back Benchers from the reality of human lives. If the hon. Gentleman will let me develop my argument, I will point out that there are real challenges for people. There is an alternative plan, which my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor and his colleagues have laid out, and I back it.
I have met young people who have already been made redundant in their early 20s and others who have done everything that the Government have asked of them, such as working hard at school. Our borough has seen huge improvements in schools and education, and its results are improving. Our young people are increasingly going to university, which was pie in the sky for many young people when I was first selected for my seat. And still, there are no jobs. We risk having a lost generation, although not like the lost generation that the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) spoke about, because we made great strides in government, although there is still more to do on skills. We risk a lost generation of young people who have achieved a lot and still cannot get a job.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most alarming consequences of the Government’s economic policies for those of us in inner-city communities is how hard the cuts hit the public sector and women workers in the public sector? Particularly in inner-city London, disproportionate numbers of public sector workers are black and minority ethnic, and there are no private sector jobs for them to go into. Those people are often the head of their household and the only earner in their household. They are the sacrifices of this misconceived economic policy.
Meg Hillier
I could not put it better than my hon. Friend and I will not try. She is absolutely right.
Young people who have never worked are now desperately seeking even unpaid work experience. What have this Government done in response? They have cut the future jobs fund so that there is no more chance of employment and no more try-before-you-buy for employers. They have cut education maintenance allowance and increased student tuition fees. Just as young people in Hackney are emerging from school, ready and qualified for university, they are losing the help that they had.
The cuts programme is so deep and so fast that it gives no hope. It does exactly what my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington said: it cuts the jobs that were providing for so many households in my constituency and keeping our local economy going.
Although the Chancellor is not in his seat, let me tell him about real people. Last week, I met a 16-year-old who said to me, “I really want a Saturday job because I want to grow from a boy into a man and this will help me.” He also told me that he wants and needs to contribute to his household’s increasingly squeezed income. He is losing the education maintenance allowance that he would have been entitled to and he is very worried.
There is the sixth-former who used her education maintenance allowance to top up the family’s electricity key on a Thursday so that she could keep the lights and heating on until the end of the week for the basics of study and existence. There is the teenager who attended school on alternate days because he and his brother had to share a pair of school trousers. Thanks to EMA, he is now at university, where he has escaped from his chaotic family background and is ready to succeed. I hope that there will be a job for him when he leaves.
There is the woman who is working to bring up her children and is using an expensive prepay meter key.
Meg Hillier
I am afraid that I will not.
That woman told me that she uses the prepay meter key because of her fear of a large quarterly bill at the end of the autumn, even though she knows that it costs more. She is doing what the Government tell her to do. She is a single parent with four children who is working to support her family, but she lives in fear of the bills every day. There is the man who came to my surgery on Monday. He has a job offer, but he faces the choice between a job and a home because of the Government’s short-sighted approach to housing benefit.
Where are the private sector jobs? In my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, most small businesses employ fewer than six people and they are struggling. I have been up and down my high street many times since the events of 8 August, but it is not just those events that have caused problems. Businesses are struggling with footfall and because people do not have disposable income to spend. They are worried about what will be down the road.
The Federation of Small Businesses has been very critical of the Government’s approach, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) indicated. Businesses on the high street need quantitative easing, including those that are being incubated by entrepreneurs in my constituency. The Prime Minister is very fond of talking about creating a silicon valley when it suits him, but those high-street businesses are exactly the sort that could be creating jobs for young and older people in my constituency. However, they risk being throttled at birth, or if they do survive—I wish them well and hope they do—they risk not growing at the rate that they could with the right support from Government.
Meg Hillier
I am afraid I will not.
Families are being squeezed. Prices are going up, with food prices having increased by 6.1% in the past year. For those who drive, petrol has gone up. Energy prices have gone up, VAT is at 20% and we are seeing a huge hike in fare prices thanks to the Tory Mayor of London. If people have a job, they are worried that they will not have it in future, and they are worried because they will not be getting pay rises. Families in my constituency have nowhere to go to get the extra money: not for them the easy credit that is available to many or the bank overdraft that is available at the end of a phone call; not for them the rich family member who can help them out or a cushion that they have saved over years of work, because they have been living a difficult existence as it is and are now squeezing until the pips squeak. They cannot squeeze any more out of their household budgets.
This Government are cutting too far, too fast, and it is not working for families, for young people or for businesses. It is not working at all, nor, sadly, are far too many of my constituents.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. This debate is very popular and I want to accommodate as many Members as I possibly can, so the time limit is being reduced to six minutes, with the usual injury time for two interventions.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
I am delighted to see that the reshuffle of the shadow Cabinet has had a real effect on its sense of humour. Government Members are of course used to the fake outrage all the time, but the terms of the motion suggest that the Opposition seem to have discovered irony.
I will not support the motion, because it demonstrates the Opposition’s fundamental failure to have any credible economic policy whatever. This five-point plan is a nationalised Ponzi scheme on steroids. Even in itself it would add £3.1 billion to our deficit. The Opposition probably do not understand what a Ponzi scheme is, but they should look at their own manifesto. People in my constituency do not believe that the way out of debt is to take on more debt. They do not believe that the way to reduce their personal liability is to spend more money.
Alison McGovern
The hon. Gentleman is incorrect, because if there were investment it would not be a fake Ponzi scheme—the assets would be real, unlike in an actual Ponzi scheme.
Jake Berry
I never said it was a fake Ponzi scheme, I said it was a real Ponzi scheme. That is the basis of the Opposition’s entire policy.
The markets believe in our plan and want us to stick to plan A: actually, so does every hard-working family in my constituency. They are struggling with personal loans and do not want interest rates to go up. Like so many of us, they are struggling with mortgages and cannot afford that to happen. The Prime Minister has offered real leadership throughout this, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been honest. That is in stark contrast to the Labour party’s constant line of “too far, too fast”.
What is the Opposition’s alternative? This five-point plan is simply too little, too late. They believe, “Why repay borrowing today when we can have business as usual and bankrupt Britain tomorrow?”
Andrew Bridgen
Does my hon. Friend agree that, like a compulsive gambler believes that one more big bet will solve all his problems, the shadow Chancellor and the Labour party believe that one more credit splurge will get us out of a debt crisis?
Jake Berry
I do, and for all addicts the hardest thing to do is admit that they have a problem. When this Government came to power in May 2010, we admitted that we had a problem with debt. Even if we fall off the wagon temporarily, we know we have that problem and so we get straight back on it. The Labour party has not even admitted it—it thinks it gave us a golden economic inheritance.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
Can the hon. Gentleman tell us by how much unemployment has risen in Rossendale and Darwen in the past 12 months?
Jake Berry
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will provide me with the figures—
Jake Berry
I do know. However, I can guarantee my constituents one thing, and one thing only: unemployment has not gone up by as much as it would have done if we had had Labour’s Ponzi scheme.
Jake Berry
I am sorry, but I will not give way again because I am running out of time and I have many points to make.
Let us look at the facts. Back in May 2010, when we came to power, we had 0.1% less debt than Greece as a proportion of GDP. Labour Members can criticise us and say that making cuts damages growth, but let us look at their alternative. Their alternative—too little, too late—would mean, as in Greece, a 15% pay cut for every doctor, nurse and policeman, and every public sector worker; and a cut of up to 40% in pensions. That is what too little, too late means.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Jake Berry
I am sorry, but I will not give way. I want to make progress.
The Labour party opposes the Government’s public spending cuts, but its alternative—the too little, too late alternative—would mean that our economy, like Greece’s, would shrink by 5% this year, and that mortgage rates would rocket. One of the things that Government Members are most proud of is our desire and aspiration to increase the tax threshold to take many of the lowest paid in our society out of tax altogether. Had we followed the too little, too late approach, as Greece did, we would have had to cut our tax-free allowance by 50%.
The Chancellor has been frank about the choppy waters ahead, yet businesses in my constituency of Rossendale and Darwen still strive to succeed. Businesses such as J&J Ormerod, the largest employer in my constituency, B&E Boys, Crown Paints and WEC engineering, are doing their best to manufacture proper products and to rebalance the UK economy, despite tough times. Those businesses know about the Labour party’s economic illiteracy. That is why, before the general election, some of them signed a letter opposing Labour’s jobs tax. Businesses in my constituency will not forget that the previous Government were the enemy of enterprise and industry, and that Labour is the party of the jobs tax.
Jake Berry
Sorry, I will not.
How ironic it is that the Opposition motion calls for a cut in national insurance. That is too little, too late, and business in my constituency knows that the Labour party is not the solution but, in fact, the problem.
Jake Berry
Sorry, but I will not.
Looking at today’s job figures, including the increase in unemployment in my constituency—
Jake Berry
The Opposition Front Bencher says from a sedentary position that the increase is 29.2%. I have real sympathy for those experiencing the increase in unemployment. People are facing an unbelievably tough time. These are uncertain times for all of us. However, if we are to have a successful economy in Rossendale and Darwen, and if we are to get people back into work, we must keep low borrowing rates and support the new enterprise zone in Lancashire, which will create jobs. Our manufacturing businesses are not thriving, but they are still growing. Companies such as Linemark in my constituency, which has just won the Queen’s award for enterprise, are growing through innovation.
The key to our success in east Lancashire in business, jobs and families is low interest rates, so we must stick to plan A. We must enable jobs and growth in Rossendale and Darwen.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
In March, the Government launched their much-heralded plan for growth, and in a document signed off by the Business Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the foreword read:
“This Plan for Growth is an urgent call for action. Britain has lost ground in the world’s economy, and needs to catch up. If we do not act now, jobs will be lost, our country will become poorer and we will find it difficult to afford the public services we all want. If we do not wake up to the world around us, our standard of living will fall, not rise.”
Those are fine words, but the Government’s actions since have only inflicted more damage. Since May last year, they have systematically dismantled and reduced the UK economy’s capacity. Ideologically driven by a quest to reduce the public sector, they have relentlessly pressed one single policy button—deficit reduction. In the northern region and my constituency, the Government’s policy is looking very much like a scorched-earth strategy.
While imposing draconian and disproportionate spending cuts, which this year alone have reduced grants to the 12 local authorities in the north-east of England by an average of £84 per head of population—compared with only £5 per head of population in the 12 least-deprived local authorities in the south of England—the Government have reduced resources for regional development in our region by at least two thirds. Before the election, the Prime Minister identified the northern region, along with Northern Ireland, as an area that would require special support to rebalance its economy—we all know what that “special support” really resembles. From my perspective, it looks like the support given to a hanged man—a rope.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
I must correct my hon. Friend. The Prime Minister said—on “Newsnight”, I think—that the north-east was over-dependent on the public sector and would be hit the hardest.
Ian Mearns
I was being kind to the Prime Minister, but he did actually use the words “rebalance the economy”. One North East, the regional development agency set up by the previous Government, is being abolished and replaced by as-yet-unfunded and as-yet-totally-impotent local enterprise partnerships in the north, including in Teesside.
Richard Fuller
The hon. Gentleman says “the Government this” and “the Government that”, but if we are talking about jobs, he ought to be talking, as I am sure that he is, to small business owners in his constituency. In those conversations, how many of them have said that they would put at risk low interest rates in this country to pursue some of the policies in the five-point plan, and how many said that they would welcome the job tax that the previous Government said that they would impose on businesses up and down the country?
Ian Mearns
Many of the businesses that I speak to in areas such as the Team Valley trading estate, which employs about 20,000 people in the private sector, complain about the pace and depth of the Government cuts. They are impacting on their order books because many of them provide for the public sector. Unemployment in the region now stands at 142,000, which means that 11.3% of the working population in the north-east are now unemployed. The only conclusion that we can draw from the rationale of the parties in government is that, for them, unemployment in the north-east is a price worth paying.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making some powerful points about the north-east and the gap in gross value added per head between it and London and the south-east. However, does he accept that over the past two decades that gap reached its widest in the last year of the previous Government?
Ian Mearns
I was critical, in many respects, of the previous Government’s regional development policy, and I admit that I never understood the rationale for spending regional development money in the south-east when it would have been better spent in areas such as the north-east to rebalance the British economy. Having said that, however, I am not going to criticise my colleagues in the south-east—they have voters as well.
The regional growth fund, which stands at only £1.4 billion over three years, is being used to plug the gap left by the RDAs, which helped significantly in areas such as the north-east and collectively had a budget of £1.4 billion every year. In areas such as the north-east of England, the RDAs were vital. So much for the words of the Deputy Prime Minister last June, when he said that the regional growth fund would
“make a real difference to companies during difficult times.”
We have yet to see a single penny of the regional growth fund being spent in any company in the north-east of England. Oh, what it must be like to have responsibility for Government policy without having any real influence over it! The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government said that he did not want to
“strangle business with red tape,”
but wanted “urgent action,” which was needed to
“rebuild and rebalance local economies…across the country.”
What we are actually seeing in response is the infliction of savage cuts that are sucking money, spending power and potential demand out of the economies of regions such as the north-east.
The north-east is part of England and part of the United Kingdom, but we are being treated disproportionately badly by this Government’s economic policies. If they ever get round to paying out money from the regional growth fund, we will frankly struggle to notice the impact because of the unemployment that already exists in the north-east after the deficit reduction strategy. The regional growth fund is taking on the appearance of a pathetic fig leaf that cannot hide the stark truth that the Government do not have a real growth strategy for Britain or a region such as the north-east of England. As we know, the local enterprise partnerships have no start-up funding, no core funding, no guaranteed access to the regional growth fund and no new legal powers. The case against the Government’s policy in the north has been eloquently set out by the Smith Institute of all people—hardly an organisation renowned for its left-leaning attitudes towards public policy—in its report “Rebalancing the economy: prospects for the North”.
The Government’s plan is simply not working, but is inflicting enormous damage on the economic capacity of the north. It is stifling and strangling our economy, not rebalancing it. Oblivious to the consequences of their actions, the Government press on blindly with plan A: deficit reduction. Tens of thousands of jobs destroyed, 1 million young people unemployed, the poorest and most vulnerable in our communities paying the most for the cuts—it is quite clear that we are not all in this together. Over the past 17 months the Government have been absolutely clear that deficit reduction has been their priority above all other considerations. Everything that has been said by the Chancellor and his supporters in the Chamber this afternoon adds to the one simple sentence: “It’s a price worth paying.” To those in the coalition Government, Tory and Lib Dem alike, I ask this. Unemployment of 2.5 million, with 1 million unemployed people under 25—is it a price worth paying? I do not think so.
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate, but sometimes I listen to Opposition Members and just cannot understand where they have been for the last 10 or 12 years. If my constituents have been listening to some of the Opposition speeches, they will be equally shocked. They will remember a Chancellor who once used to speak of prudence and financial stability creating an economy where the books were balanced. Well, prudence was jettisoned a long time ago and it is certainly not a friend of the new shadow Chancellor. Until Opposition Members understand that they have to have a sensible, balanced economic approach, they will never have credibility with the people of South Staffordshire or, I am sure, the people of this country.
We often hear Opposition Members talk of a lost decade of low growth, low employment and low private sector employment. Well, we had a lost decade—a lost 13 years—in the west midlands between 1997 and 2010. You probably often sit there, Mr Deputy Speaker, wondering how many private sector jobs were created in the west midlands between 1998 and 2008. You were probably thinking it was perhaps 250,000—in those halcyon days, when house prices were booming and the economy was growing—but I am afraid to say that you would be wrong if you thought that. If you thought that the figure was 100,000, I am afraid that you would also be wrong. In fact, there was not a single net private sector job created between 1998 and 2008 in the west midlands. We saw a decline of more than 60,000 private sector jobs in the region.
Chris Leslie
Can the hon. Gentleman tell us whether unemployment has risen or fallen in his constituency since he was elected?
Gavin Williamson
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. Between September 2010 and September 2011, 74 additional people became unemployed in my constituency. That is a tragic situation, but this Government are doing something about it. Unlike the previous Government, who did little or nothing for my constituency, this Government are delivering. I will explain how. We are out there creating and delivering jobs, and making things happen in South Staffordshire. Already, thanks to the actions of this Government, we have been able to save 400 jobs there by ensuring that the investment was delivered for Moog, an important employer in my constituency, which is relocating to a new factory on the i54 business park.
What is more, this Government are committed to delivering more jobs, not only in my constituency but right across the west midlands. Through the Government’s actions, we have secured an enormous investment of £350 million from Jaguar Land Rover to build a new engine plant on the i54, which has been designated an enterprise zone.
Emma Reynolds
I live about 300 metres from the i54 site. Will the hon. Gentleman admit that, were it not for the Labour Government and the regional development agency, which decontaminated the site, invested in it and made it a strategic site, we would never have had that investment in the first place?
Gavin Williamson
I thank the hon. Lady for making that point, but let me explain something. Having run a manufacturing business for many years before entering the House, I quickly discovered that when considering relocating a factory to a new site, two core ingredients are needed. They are electricity and gas, but no funding had been provided by Advantage West Midlands to install either on that site. If that is far-sighted policy from a regional development agency, I do not think it is particularly great.
The investment from Jaguar Land Rover will create 750 jobs in my constituency and the wider area, as well as many thousands more. This country is now investing in manufacturing again. It is no longer a country with a declining manufacturing base, in which manufacturing declined from 21% to 12% of our gross domestic product. We are now ensuring that that percentage will grow, because that is what we need. I believe that this Government will deliver that.
This is not just about encouraging manufacturing; it is about encouraging the service sector and all the other sectors. We are supporting small businesses as well as big ones. We have already seen a massive increase in the research and development tax credits available to small businesses. I recently visited Squire, the makers of some of the finest padlocks in the country. I suggest that Members purchase one for their garden shed. The R and D tax credits introduced at the last Budget for small and medium-sized enterprises are encouraging businesses such as Squire to invest in research and development and in innovation to provide them with a secure, prosperous and healthy future.
Those are the initiatives that South Staffordshire needs, and that the whole country needs. The Government have a difficult legacy to deal with, thanks to Labour, but they are helping Jaguar Land Rover, Moog and all those other businesses through the creation of enterprise zones and the lowering of corporation tax. They are supporting those businesses at every level, and that is what will deliver growth for this country.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
I will not tax your brain, Mr Deputy Speaker, by getting you to guess about job creation or anything like that; I would like to make just a couple of points.
First, I sometimes approach a debate such as this with a degree of unease. There is always a tendency either to pretend that there is no problem because the existing policy has to be defended or else to magnify the existing problems and in doing so to have an impact on confidence. One thing I have found from speaking to business people in Northern Ireland is that although we are going through difficult circumstances, which everyone recognises, there is no point in further impacting on consumer and investment confidence by, through political point scoring, making the situation appear worse. We need to try to avoid that in a debate such as this.
Secondly, I have looked at the statistics on Northern Ireland and found that we have seen no growth in the economy over the past 24 months. We have had an increase in unemployment and, of course, given our heavy dependence on the public sector, the public spending cuts of £4 billion over the next four years—40% of the capital budget—are bound to have a deflating impact on the economy.
In listening to today’s debate, to the Chancellor’s reaction and to some of the Opposition’s proposals, we have to consider whether the rigid battle lines that have been drawn are of benefit to the economy in the long term. I accept what the Chancellor has said today—there is considerable risk in changing position—but any economic strategy is bound to carry risk with it, as it involves trying to project and look into the future on the basis of many different variables, such as how markets will react and what will be the impact of a decision. We do not have perfect knowledge about those things, so sticking rigidly to the current plan carries a risk.
We do not know how the markets are going to react to the increased borrowing that will be required as tax revenues fall and spending on unemployment and other benefits rises. Currently, the markets seem prepared to accept that there might well be an increase in the deficit because of what is happening, but that the Government are still on plan to reduce the deficit. Where is the tipping point when the markets begin to say, “Do we really have a credible plan?” Equally, if we go down the path of increasing spending and reducing taxation, at what stage will the markets say, “You are deviating from the plan”?
One thing that I suppose has come out of the debate so far—at least from the IMF, the OECD and even some of the credit agencies—is an acceptance that there can be some flexibility. Even the Chancellor is beginning to accept that demand in the economy needs to be stimulated. I suppose his attitude and approach to quantitative easing is an indication that he sees demand stimulated by monetary policy but equally that good fiscal policies and ideas may also be considered as a means of trying to stimulate growth. I am not so sure, when I look at what is happening to bank lending in Northern Ireland, that quantitative easing is having an impact. The British Bankers Association has published its quarterly figures. From the last quarter of last year to the second quarter of this year, bank lending to small businesses fell by 30% in Northern Ireland. With the Chancellor telling us that there is sufficient liquidity in the banking system, one has to ask whether simply making money available is going to be the answer.
Some fiscal measures have been suggested here today. It has been suggested that we need not increase spending and reduce taxes to create extra demand. Instead, we could direct extra spending towards the activities that create the biggest multiplier effect—for instance, spending on housing and reductions in VAT, whether for extensions to houses or for the tourist industry. There are measures that do not cost a penny, such as reducing regulation. I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement that he will not stick to the carbon reduction targets. As one who voted against the Climate Change Act 2008, I am pleased to observe that some reality is now entering that debate. Why should we impose a 40% increase in energy costs on our industry when that is not being done elsewhere, with the aim of reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere and thereby somehow or other affecting the climate?
There are many suggestions to be considered. I believe that the Chancellor has more leeway than he claims, and I hope that we shall see some movement as a result of today’s debate.
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate.
I am pleased and interested to learn that the shadow Chancellor recognises that the problem we face is an international problem. He spoke eloquently about the deepening eurozone crisis, and also about the prospects for Greece and Portugal, which frankly are not too good. I am also pleased to speak having heard the speech of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who gave a graphic account of the difficulties that we face from the point of view of her constituents. What we have not heard from the Opposition is an admission that they were in any way responsible for the difficulties that we face today. What we have heard, from Members on both sides of the House, is the expression of a desire for a bipartisan approach and a civilised debate, and I am all for that. However, if we are to understand the challenges that we face today, we must understand how we got into this mess in the first place.
It is true that every country in the OECD and in the economically developed world faces similar challenges, but it is not true that those countries managed their public finances as badly as we did in the years between 1997 and 2010. Let us rehearse some of the facts. We entered this period of our national life with a higher deficit-to-GDP ratio than any other OECD country: 12%, when the German ratio was 3.3%. That was a direct consequence of decisions made by those on the Treasury Bench between 1997 and 2010. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) pointed out, the then Government ran a deficit in every year between 2001 and 2010—for nine straight years. Even when the economy was booming, we ran deficits of £30 billion a year in 2002, 2003 and 2004. The shadow Chancellor referred to Lord Keynes—
Emma Reynolds
I should prefer the hon. Gentleman to speak about debt-to-GDP ratios. Does he accept that on the eve of the world recession we had the second lowest ratio in the G7, second only to Canada’s?
Kwasi Kwarteng
What the markets were looking at was the deficit. The hon. Lady may remember what happened to the gilt market as her party’s Government were being shunted out. The price of British Government debt rose and yields fell in direct anticipation of Labour leaving power. The markets made their own decision. In the last 18 months, the price of British Government debt—that is, the interest rates that we pay—has fallen. It has managed to remain at the same level, precisely because markets realise that the Chancellor and his team are doing the right thing in tackling the deficit. We have been told repeatedly that if we were to show any relaxation of our deficit reduction programme, the markets would dump our bonds and interest rates would rise, which would cause immense damage to the hon. Lady’s constituents as well as mine.
Rachel Reeves
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that before the last general election—between January and May 2010—yields on Government bonds were falling and they have stayed at low rates since the general election? The markets did not know which party would win the election because the campaign was so close. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman cannot argue that those yields were falling in anticipation of an incoming Conservative Government, because nobody knew that.
Kwasi Kwarteng
The yields were not falling in anticipation of a Conservative Government, but they were certainly falling in anticipation of the then Labour Government going out. Markets anticipate events—that is how people make money—and the markets had, in their wisdom, decided that Labour would not be re-elected. I assure the House that if Labour had been re-elected, the markets would have dumped British debt and we would be facing a much tougher interest rate environment than we currently face.
I always enjoy listening to the shadow Chancellor’s speeches, as they are very entertaining, and I enjoyed his speech today—I think one Member even mentioned vaudeville, which I think does vaudeville discredit. However, I was staggered by the shadow Chancellor’s assertion that the fact that we have low interest rates is somehow a reflection of our having a weak economy. That was an extraordinary claim. People in my constituency are very grateful indeed that we have low interest rates, because that enables them to pay their mortgage liabilities. It seemed extremely arrogant for a supposedly responsible politician to say on the Floor of the House that low interest rates were a bad thing, which was essentially what the shadow Chancellor was arguing. [Interruption.] He was suggesting that they were a symptom of a weak economy, which is a bad thing.
On the contrary, however, our low interest rates are a signal that the markets have confidence in this Government. They have absolute belief that the current Government are going to deal with the deficit that was created, almost deliberately, by the Labour Government. We in the House of Commons have to understand why this deficit arose, so we can explain that to the country. It was not just handed down to us by some Moses figure—although the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) probably thinks of himself in that way. It was not handed down from on high; rather, it was created by Governments and by the Members who then sat on the Treasury Bench, and it was created for the simple reason that they, in their arrogance, honestly believed that they had abolished boom and bust. We all remember those statements, and it is an arrogant misrepresentation of the past to suggest that they did not think that. The last Prime Minister believed that he had solved the key economic question of our time, but he was wrong, and it is as a direct consequence of his mistake that our Government have had to introduce the policies we are pursuing.
Many people will ask why we do not have a different plan. They will ask: “Why don’t you suddenly borrow and spend more money in the time-honoured Labour fashion?” That would be a road to disaster, however. It would create a massive lack of confidence and lack of credibility in the British Government’s programme, leading to the markets dumping our Government debt and our interest rates rising. It would lead to people in our constituencies having to face higher payments every month. They would be squeezed even more if we were not as focused and committed as we are to reducing the deficit.
I have tried to inject some reality into this debate. We have heard consistent denials from Labour Members, and we have heard no admission of guilt or wrongdoing and no ideas as to how we might get out of the situation we are in. We have also heard no real arguments to attempt to explain why what the last Labour Government did was right. Interestingly, no Labour Member has said in this debate, “We did a marvellous job; we gave you a golden inheritance.” I would grant them more credit if any of them would be bold enough to stand up and say that, but they will not do so. That is because, as everyone in this country knows, Labour is bereft of ideas, and it would be a disaster if we were ever to leave our future in its hands again.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I recall taking part in a number of debates on the economy before the general election and saying on several occasions that there were four ways to deal with the deficit: by cutting spending; by increasing taxation; through economic growth, which would be the most important way by far; and through inflation, the method that dare not speak its name. Since then we have seen the cuts, we have seen people losing their jobs and we have seen the economy undermined. The thing to remember is that when someone is thrown out of work we lose the output of their goods and services and, on average, they cost us £12,000 in tax not taken in and benefits paid out. We now have the highest jobless total since the one under the previous Tory Government. Some of us—not just Tories—have memories about what went on before.
Frank Dobson
I am not going to give way to anybody because it takes up time from everybody else’s speeches.
VAT has been increased, and that hits the worst-off most. There has also been what is, in effect, a tax increase on everybody who has to commute to work: the massive fare increases that have been pushed through, which are far above the rate of inflation. We have certainly seen inflation. One of the reasons why Governments quite like inflation is that if they borrow £1 and there is 5% inflation, they pay back 95p instead of £1. That is why the Government have not taken any notice of the problems caused by the rate of inflation, but it certainly hits people’s pensions and wages.
As for growth, there simply isn’t any. Growth is needed both in this country and worldwide. Growth was the theme of the London G20 summit. I know that it is very unfashionable to praise the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, but the fact is that at that summit, and in the run-up to it, he did more than anybody in the world to convince all the Governments that they had to start investing more in the world economy. I have heard from someone else that it is Sarkozy’s private view that Gordon Brown’s intellect and drive—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The right hon. Gentleman should refer to the former Prime Minister by his constituency.
Frank Dobson
I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is Sarkozy’s view that it was the intellect and drive of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) that virtually saved the world from a total disastrous slump.
Since then, the new UK Government have joined the backsliders; they are not going for growth, either here or worldwide. They have let the bankers and speculators back in charge, blaming public spending everywhere in the world and blaming public services for what has gone wrong. This Government have been delighted to wheel on witnesses defending their policy, but I ask people to look at who these famous witnesses are. They are the bankers, the financiers and the speculators—the people who caused the worldwide problem in the first place.
About two days before its recent unfortunate fraud case, a very distinguished person from UBS said that we needed austerity for all and then everything would be okay. Unfortunately, the interviewer did not ask, “Are you one of the people who lost £44 billion in the crash?” A couple of days later, someone from Citigroup was advocating austerity for all. Unfortunately, the interviewer did not say, “You are from the company that lost £60 billion in the crash. Why should we take a shred of notice of someone with your track record?” Then, my favourite, Ernst and Young, said that we needed austerity for all, but never mentioned being the auditors of Lehman Brothers. One would think that a period of silence—a decade of silence—would have been appropriate.
Frankly, we have seen that the bankers, financiers and speculators have far too much power in this world. We have the Alice in Wonderland situation where the banks cause a recession; the Greek economy declines; the banks in effect charge the Greeks exorbitant rates of interest; the banks, who created the crisis, then threaten the ability of the Greeks to pay them back, meaning that the Greeks might default; and, if the Greeks default, the banks default. The banks start it off, and in the end might default—and what happens? They do not rely on the private sector or market forces. They come grovelling to taxpayers all over Europe to ask them to bail them out of their stupidity—for that is what their policies are. We hear about social security scroungers, but the worst social security scrounger in the world does not compare to the scrounging banks when they get things wrong.
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson). Before I begin, may I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) on her promotion?
I am glad that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras mentioned Alice in Wonderland, because that is exactly where Labour is. What we have heard from the shadow Chancellor today suggests that it believes that we can solve a debt crisis by taking on more debt. Let us remind ourselves of the position that this country was in when the Government changed 18 months ago. We had a national debt of £940 billion, up from £350 billion when the Labour Government entered power.
The hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) mentioned the debt to GDP ratio, and in terms of net debt that is at 62% today. She is right that it was lower—it gradually went up as the previous Government came to their end—but she missed out the fact that the markets do not just look at the official national debt but take into account the unofficial national debt. The good thing is that now this Government are in power we have started to have a transparent process to assess what that debt is. Before the market was all based on estimates.
I can tell the hon. Lady that the £940 billion is not even half the story. In fact, it is one third of the story because it represents one third of the total national debt of this country. The whole of Government accounts published in July by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility said that the public pension liability of the UK is £1,100 billion. PFI liabilities increased tenfold over the 13 years of the previous Government to £40 billion according to the OBR. The Office for National Statistics reported in the summer that the cost of financial interventions because of the bank bail-outs is £1,300 billion of additional debt. If we add all those numbers up, they come to £3,380 billion—a mind-boggling number equal to 225% of GDP.
Let us look at the five-point scam suggested by the shadow Chancellor. Four of those five policies would lead to a direct increase in our debt and one, the bankers’ bonus tax, would raise less than the levy that the Government have already imposed. I spent 20 years trading Government bonds. I advised Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and Argentina when they were at default or close to default and I can tell anyone who cares to know that the way out of a debt crisis is not to borrow more money. Investors have a choice. They do not have to buy anyone’s bonds. They can look at any country or corporation in the world and there is no way to force those bonds down their throat. That was exactly the point we had reached before the last election and if the Government had not changed, we could very well have been in the same predicament as countries such as Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Iceland.
It is not just our triple A rating that shows that the Government’s policy in dealing with the debt is the right one. It is not just the gilt deals, as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) mentioned, although our 10-year gilt yield is at 2.6%.
Andrew Bridgen
My hon. Friend might recall that the previous Government created £200 billion-worth of quantitative easing just prior to the general election. However, that money was not pumped into the banking market to give liquidity—98% of it was used to buy Government debt because nobody else wanted to buy it at that stage.
Sajid Javid
I quite agree with my hon. Friend. The 10-year gilt yield today is 2.6%—one of the lowest we have ever had in our history—versus 3.8% when this Government came to power. That number is not just important to the financial markets: it makes a big difference to the amount of money this Government have to spend on servicing our national debt, to the amount that corporations have to spend when they borrow and then invest, and to the amount that ordinary households need to spend on things such as their mortgages. It makes a real difference to the cost of living.
Let us consider another indicator. I always like to look at the credit default swap spread, which is the amount that the markets charge for insurance against a potential sovereign default. Today, Britain has, for the first time, the lowest CDS spread of any large European country. According to Bloomberg, of the 157 sovereigns that trade in the CDS market, Britain has the fifth-lowest CDS spread in the world. That, again, is a reflection of the policies of this Government.
I should like to finish by picking up one positive point that the shadow Chancellor made to his party conference, which was the only thing I heard with which I agreed. He said
“we will set out for our manifesto tough fiscal rules that the next Labour government will have to stick to”.
I am glad that he has recognised the need for tough fiscal rules that are independently monitored by the Office for Budget Responsibility, as that is exactly what I suggested in a private Member’s Bill in July, the National Debt Cap Bill, which will have its Second Reading on 20 January 2012.
My proposal is that we should have an independent, tough cap on the net outstanding national debt as a proportion of GDP, monitored by the OBR. That would not be a magic bullet for dealing with potential future debt problems, but it would force the House to have a national conversation every time any Government wanted to increase debt beyond a certain point. If they had a good reason for doing that, the House could support them and Members might have an opportunity to discuss the issue with their constituents. If the House did not accept the Government’s reasons, it could prevent our country from becoming more indebted. I say to the shadow Chancellor that there is no point waiting for the next Labour manifesto because there may not be another Labour Government—at least, not any time soon. It would be far better for him to take action now, put his money where his mouth is and support my Bill, which is coming to the House in just a few months.
In conclusion, there is nothing in the motion that would help to generate investment and create jobs. In fact, if it were implemented in any form, it would destroy jobs. I urge the House to vote against it.
Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), who has real knowledge and experience of the bond markets, as he has revealed today. He obviously knows a lot about the ratings agencies and he has a Bill before the House on debt ceilings. He is also an expert on credit default swaps. I share his great enthusiasm for that, but he will have to explain, on the basis of what he has said and what the Government’s policy is, why, if this is about deficit reduction and debt reduction, £46 billion more is going to have to be borrowed and spent in the next few years to cover their policies.
I want to mention Teesside because we have had the good news in the past few days that the insurance company, AXA, proposes to create 450 jobs in Middlesbrough, adding to the 300 staff it employs at Teesdale in Stockton. A great deal of comment—indeed, criticism, I would say—has come from my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds East (Mr Mudie) and for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) about the creation of enterprise zones and about the regional growth fund. In all my years in the House of Commons, I have had to deal with the Government of the day and although we might have liked to keep the regional development agencies, the reality is that we now have enterprise zones and the regional growth fund. We on Teesside have benefited from the regional growth fund and we also have an enterprise zone that we worked very hard to achieve—and now we will work very hard with the Government. There is also the good news that 1,000 staff are being taken on at the former Teesside Cast Products plant, with 100 already beginning the induction programme.
The Prime Minister, in Question Time today, ventured to say, in his feisty exchange with the Leader of the Opposition, that 300,000 new apprenticeships had been created in our country. I visited Carillion in my constituency last week to see the sterling work that it does in training apprentices in the real-life work of bricklaying, concrete mixing, pneumatic drilling, and other such skilled tasks. That is the kind of work that we see being done across the land on rainy and windy days—precisely the conditions under which those young men were working. Those young apprentices are a credit to themselves and to their future. I welcome the Prime Minister’s comments on the apprenticeship scheme.
If we take an overall look at what the Government are doing, we find the law of unforeseen consequences. There is a lack of compatibility in their objectives. Unemployment rises, so benefits have to rise. Benefits have gone up by £12 billion. We have heard a lot about the Welfare Reform Bill; the Prime Minister referred at Question Time to universal credit, and the Chancellor referred to the Bill today; he said that our amendments to it would add to the deficit. Of course, amendments can be reasoned, substantive or probing. Until we see them when they come before the House and know how we will vote, they have no great significance.
We see in our country, and we saw in Greece, that a too-rapid deficit reduction will lead to reduced growth. The classic example of Greece, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) referred, shows that if deficit reduction is too steep, there will be zero growth. That is the situation in our country: we have been reducing far too quickly. We talk as though my right hon. Friend never had a deficit reduction programme. We had one: we would have reduced the deficit by half over four years—a policy that even Mervyn King supported before the Government changed; then he changed to a different policy.
We were compared with Greece, which I always find very offensive to the Greeks, never mind to ourselves. The fifth largest economy in the world was being compared with a nation state of 12 million people in the Mediterranean—a state that cheated on its accounts with the European Union. Not only was that comparison offensive, but it distorted our country’s entire policy on deficit reduction.
Sir Stuart Bell
I am not giving way; it is too late in the day. The unforeseen consequence of a too-rapid reduction in the deficit and no growth is that confidence has gone from our system. The hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) referred to that. We have lost confidence. We say that we have the confidence of the markets, and of course we do; why would we not? We do not have the confidence of the people—of those trying to find jobs, of the young who have lost their jobs, and of other unemployed people. We do not have the confidence of the ordinary person in the street, who looks at the Government and sees the failure of their policies, so I would be cautious if I were a Government Member.
I come back to a statement made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West, and I invite the House to remember it. There will be a change in policy. It will not be plan B or plan C. It will come in the autumn statement or the next Budget. The policy needs to change if we are to get growth. There is no future in a steep deficit reduction that will never lead to growth—not now, and not in the future.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. To assist in enabling a greater number of Members to take part in the debate, the time limit is reduced to five minutes.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
I hope that the five-minute time limit was not brought in because I was the next speaker. It is a pleasure to follow the considered comments of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell). In particular, I welcome his comments about enterprise zones, which were also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson). The Jaguar Land Rover investment that he mentioned was bid for by Wales, too. It is a great shame that, as Tim Williams from the Welsh Automotive Forum stated, one reason why Wales lost out on that investment was the foot-dragging of the Labour Welsh Assembly Government, who refused to implement the enterprise zone process in Wales because it was a Westminster Government proposal.
The comments of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough were much more positive and balanced than those of the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), who decided to attack the credibility of bankers. He might be right, but when one is making a point in the House about the credibility of individuals, one should ask about the credibility of the shadow Chancellor, who advised the former Prime Minister to sell our gold reserves at a very low price. If we want to talk about credibility, we should remember the actions of Members on our own side as well.
This debate is about jobs and growth. I represent a constituency in north Wales where we have a significant small business community. That means that we have a lower dependency on public sector jobs in the Aberconwy constituency than in most of north Wales and most of Wales. That is not to say that the public sector is not important. I regret every single job lost in the public sector, but we have to acknowledge the fact that we must live within our means. The small business community in my part of north Wales has broadly welcomed the actions of the coalition Government. It has seen a credible approach to reducing debt, dealing with the financial crisis that we are facing, and creating a stable economic environment that will allow it to invest and create real employment opportunities for the people I represent.
However, in the context of the debate it is important to point out that there are issues that cause concern for small businesses. When I mention small businesses, I am talking about what most Members would describe as micro-businesses. In the 1980s, when we saw Wales recover so dramatically from the loss of the heavy industries, that recovery was based on the fact that Wales created more new businesses than any other part of the United Kingdom. I am certain that there are businesses in Wales that are willing to take that challenge forward, but there are issues that we need to deal with.
Those issues might not look very important to people dealing with swaps in the market in London and so forth. For example, one of the issues that small businesses in the tourism sector in my constituency resent is the VAT threshold. Most people would say, “What’s he going on about?”, but the VAT threshold is a barrier to growth. Someone setting up a small business in the tourism sector reaches a turnover level of £73,000 and faces a cliff edge—the fact that if they go on to turn over more than £73,000 a year, they are penalised by the system. Anyone who visited Llandudno this week would see cafes that have closed for the winter, bed and breakfast businesses—
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point about VAT and tourism. Does he accept that it is wrong that our tourist businesses, particularly those offering accommodation, are handicapped because VAT rates are higher in this country than in many of our continental competitors?
Guto Bebb
I am grateful for that intervention. It is my next point.
Let me finish on the subject of the threshold. When small businesses hit a turnover of £70,000, they are about to reach the point where they need to start employing staff. A system that penalises growth is something that we need to re-examine. I know that we have to do so in the context of the current financial situation, but small businesses in my constituency would be delighted if we could do something about the VAT threshold.
On the tourism sector, I am told I have more hotel beds in my constituency than the rest of Wales put together, so I am occasionally accused of pleading on behalf of the tourism sector when I say that it is a real concern that VAT rates on hotel bedrooms, for example, are being reduced to 7% or 6% in other parts of Europe, such as Ireland, Germany and France, yet in Wales we still have a 20% VAT rate. I have spoken with members of the Government about this and I have been told that we need to provide proof that a reduction in the VAT rate in the tourism sector would be beneficial.
A report that I have obtained from Deloitte indicates that if, for example, the VAT rate on hotel bedrooms was reduced from 20% to 5%, there would be an immediate cost of about £1.2 billion in the short term, but over the period of a Parliament, there would be a net benefit of £2.4 billion to the UK economy. When we recall that the Prime Minister stated that tourism should be a driver for growth in our economy and that tourism is a sector that employs people on a very large scale, we need to consider that. I would be grateful if we could receive some comment from the Treasury in due course on the issue and the need to examine it.
Finally, in the spirit of cross-party co-operation, which some Members have mentioned, the fact that Labour Front Benchers have decided to take on board the concerns of the construction sector is not a reason to dismiss the option of changing the rate of VAT charged on work to existing buildings. Many small construction companies argue that the current situation, in which there is a zero rate of VAT on new build but a 20% rate on refurbishment, is an anomaly that we must look at. There are figures that indicate that reducing VAT on refurbishment would be economically beneficial, and the fact that the Labour party has adopted it is not a reason to say no.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. Today’s shocking unemployment figures are only the latest confirmation that the Government’s economic policy is in tatters. When they came to power last May, the economy was growing and unemployment was falling. Only 16 months later there is a growth crisis in our country. Growth is flatlining. Unemployment is rising and is at its highest level since 1994. Youth unemployment is rising and is at its highest level since records began. Women’s unemployment is rising and is at its highest level since 1988. In my constituency the claimant rate has increased by 10% over the past year and we have an unemployment rate that is double the national average.
What do the Government say? They try to blame the eurozone. That is a completely fatuous claim, because unemployment in the eurozone and in the US is falling. The fatuous comparison with Greece really makes me angry, because Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio has been double ours for quite some time and over 100% since the early ’90s. The truth is that the Government’s economic policy is politically motivated. Let us face it: the Chancellor is their chief political strategist and his calculation last year was to get the pain out of the way early in this Parliament so that he could offer some sweeteners towards the end, when the economy will hopefully be growing again, so that they can try to win a majority and will not have to tolerate the Lib Dems in government. Their plan is hurting, but it is not working.
The Government’s political motivation and their ideological commitment to a much smaller state is blinding them to the reality that their policies are actually making it more difficult to cut the deficit. They are now set to borrow £46 billion more than they planned. They have created a vicious circle, with massive public sector job cuts, fewer people paying taxes, more people claiming jobseeker’s allowance, less revenue in Government coffers and therefore higher than expected borrowing. They should face up to the fact that these deep cuts are self-defeating.
It is not just the Labour party that is telling the Government that their economic policy is dangerously wrong. Businesses, commentators and economists are lining up to urge them to develop a credible plan for growth. Even the Conservative Chair of the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), who is not in his place, has criticised the Government for lacking a growth plan. He recently said that the
“piecemeal policies for growth need radical improvement. In places it is inconsistent, even incoherent.”
In fact, the Tory leadership was so worried about his forthright opinions that he was literally bundled into a private room for a quiet chat after the Prime Minister’s speech to his party conference. The Chancellor’s good friend, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, has also warned that the Government should be prepared to change course if the economy is headed for weak growth and high unemployment. Surely that is exactly where we are now.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The Opposition’s motion recognises the need for a one-year cut in VAT on home improvements. Does the hon. Lady feel that such an initiative, by its own nature, will motivate the construction industry, give opportunities to apprentices in particular and ensure that the economy grows, rather than stagnates?
Emma Reynolds
I could not agree more, and I was just moving on to the interdependence between the public and private sectors, which the Government seem to be totally unaware of. According to an independent study, at least 2.3 million private sector jobs are now at risk from public spending cuts. Some parts of the country are being hit harder than others. Oxford Economics forecasts that in the west midlands, between 2010 and 2016, 310,000 jobs are at risk in private sector firms that are directly or indirectly reliant on public sector spending. That is on top of a net loss of 50,000 public sector jobs across the west midlands.
The victims of this Government’s policy are mostly the young and women. Young people are the future of our country. For the first time in decades, parents are pessimistic about their children’s futures, wanting them to do better than they did but fearing that their opportunities will be worse than their own.
It is time for the Chancellor to put aside his original political strategy of getting the pain in early in this Parliament and admit that his economic plan is not working. He needs to change direction. There is an alternative. Of course we need to reduce the deficit, but with deep and fast cuts, his plan is not working. Without economic growth, it will not be possible to bring the deficit down.
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)
We have heard eloquent speeches about the western debt crisis, but underlying that we have a competitiveness crisis, because the west has built up debt while the east has saved, and there is a gross imbalance.
The legacy of 13 years of Labour Government is one of red tape, meddling and taxation. We are now 83rd in the world for our burden of regulation and 94th for our burden of taxation. We are 28th in terms of infrastructure. In maths, we are 28th, and in science, we are 16th. We have the highest child care costs in the world. Labour made the labour market much more inflexible and made life much more difficult for working parents. In 1997, there were 100,000 child minders in the market; by 2010, that figure had reduced to 55,000 because of the burden of regulation on the sector. Child minders were the cheapest and most flexible way of providing child care. A lot of people have struggled to get child care because of the costs that Labour imposed on the market.
In education, we saw a denigration of traditional subjects such as maths, science and languages. Whereas those in the rest of the world were encouraging students to do those subjects, in Britain the numbers dropped, as did the quality. We have the lowest proportion of 16 to 18-year-olds studying maths in the OECD. Labour Members have talked about youth unemployment, but what about their appalling record in education, which means that many of our young people have left school without the skills they need to work in today’s workplace? Many employers care most about languages, yet the proportion of those studying languages at GCSE dropped from 79% to 44%. The shadow Chancellor used to be the Education Secretary; he did nothing in that job to improve the skills of young people.
Then we move on to infrastructure. Huge amounts of money were wasted on wasteful schemes such as Building Schools for the Future. Meanwhile, in 1997 Labour cancelled the road building programme, leaving roads such as the A11 undualled and the economies of counties such as Norfolk held back. Luckily we have a new Government who are putting in that infrastructure, and that work is starting next week.
The Opposition talk about living standards, but how are we to get our living standards up if we cannot produce goods competitively with the rest of the world? At the moment, we are buying more goods and services from those in the rest of the world than they are buying from us. That is a legacy of the previous Government’s supply-side policies.
What do we need to do? First, we need to reduce regulation. The Chancellor is absolutely right about lengthening the period for applying for unfair dismissal. We heard nothing from the Opposition about their view of this crucial issue; they have not made up their minds about employment regulation. I want parents, not bureaucrats, to be in charge of systems such as child care. We need to get rid of the bureaucracy that has raised the costs and limited the supply of child care. No new places have been provided since 2005, and that is a Labour party legacy.
We need a massive focus on improving maths and science in our schools. All the leading countries—Germany, Canada and many Asian countries—insist on rigorous subjects until the age of 16, including languages, history and sciences. The Opposition have done nothing but oppose the English baccalaureate that brings those subjects in.
It is going to be a long, hard slog to get our country back on track after the huge misuse of capital, the inflexibility and the regulation of our labour market of the past 13 years, but we must do it. Britain has to stop comparing itself just with other countries in Europe; we have to compare ourselves with rising countries across the world. We have to be humble enough to learn lessons from those countries, rather than just looking over our shoulders.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). Her points about competitiveness in the long term and the immediate future are valid. However, all of us who have been in industry know without a doubt that long periods of deflation, inactivity, insufficiency of demand and cuts hurt competitiveness. That is the trouble with the Government’s policy.
By sleight of hand and cleverness in debate, the Chancellor seems to have turned the debate from being about what the Government’s plan originally aimed to do into being about debt and interest rate management. We are all pleased that there has been some success in those areas, but at what cost has that success come? It has come at the cost of missing the central aim of the plan that the Chancellor set out when he came into office in June last year: to reduce the deficit within this Parliament. It is quite obvious that we are not getting anywhere near that. Indeed, every single indicator in the plan is going into reverse and being missed. The unemployment figures that came out today are disastrous and will make the plan cost a lot more. We are overshooting the borrowing requirement, which was meant to be reduced, by £46 billion before we even come on to the increased costs of higher unemployment and the benefits that go with it.
Mr Robinson
I will give way in a moment.
Inherent in the plan are further unnecessary deflation and cuts in the economy. The growth plan was essential to the original plan of stabilising and reducing the deficit. I agreed with that entirely, as I am sure did all Members, particularly the Government Members who speak about the private sector. However, it relied on the private sector getting going and increasing investment, output and net exports. Every one of those things is going into reverse.
After I have given way to my hon. Friend, I will come back to that point and deal with this week’s National Institute of Economic and Social Research report.
Robert Flello
My hon. Friend is making a very good point about growth in the private sector. His constituency, like mine, will have businesses that could export because they have order books for three years, but cannot because the banks will not lend them any money to solve their cash-flow issues. They cannot do the work or fulfil their contractual orders because they do not have the working capital to do so due to the nonsense that is going on.
Mr Robinson
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I will come to the problem of bank lending towards the end of the few minutes that I have.
To see the central failure of the plan and why it is so obviously not working, one must just look at what the NIESR has said about the progress of manufacturing, on which the plan relies:
“manufacturing output—the biggest contributor to industrial production—fell for the third month in a row, suggesting the engine of the economic recovery had shifted into reverse.”
I do not think that anybody can doubt that. The plan is not working, like it or not. Manufacturing output fell 0.3% between July and August, meaning that it has fallen for three months in a row. At the beginning of this year it was increasing by 6.1%, but that has dropped to 1% on an annual basis. We are looking at a catastrophe.
The Government attempt to blame all this on the previous Labour Government, as if we created the world crisis, which we did not. We have to find a way of yanking them out of that mindset. It is quite clear to anybody looking at the situation as we go into the second year of their plan that they own this economic policy. It is their economic policy and their plan that are on trial, not what the Labour Government did or did not do five, six, seven or eight years ago. It is their plan that is not working. I do not know why everybody on the Government Benches cannot see that that is a simple fact. Whether we did the right thing is totally irrelevant to the present situation. The question is: is the Government’s plan working? It is quite clear that it is not. I will willingly give way to the Chief Secretary if he wants to intervene on that point. Realising that, the Government are trying to move the debate to another issue, which is not the central issue.
The Government are also trying to introduce some measures that will help, and they have gone for monetary easing and credit easing. The trouble is, the history of monetary easing does not suggest that it gets into the real economy. Indeed, when the Governor of the Bank of England gave that remarkable interview to two economic journalists following the announcement of the £75 billion increase in monetary easing, he could not say that it would get into the real economy. He said, “That’s none of my business,” but of course it is. He said, “I will lend it to the banks, what they do with it is up to them.” We know as a fact from previous experience that it does not get to the high street or into the real economy. Unless measures are taken to direct that money effectively in some way or another, against the Governor’s explicit policy of not interfering in capital markets at all, it will not work. We know that Project Merlin similarly failed.
The Chancellor has now come up with a great plan for credit easing, but who is going to administer it and dress up the bonds involved? Will there be a composite element of different companies? Who will decide who gets the money and who does not? Perhaps the Chief Secretary will enlighten us when he winds up the debate, but there is nothing concrete about the plan. It is just an idea that has been floated, like Merlin or monetary easing. It sounds good—if we could get small companies in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) back working with money, it would be great. We would all back it, as we are in principle.
It is no good the Government believing that they cannot embark on capital investment right throughout the economy. Of course the plans will take time to introduce, although if they had been started a year and a half ago, when we pointed out to the Government what they should be doing, they would be ready now. Every time we have gone to the Treasury we have been told, “Oh, that won’t have any effect immediately.” That argument just puts off the day on which plans are implemented. The Government’s plan is not working, and we can put forward plans that would get the country back to work and also help to reduce the deficit much more effectively than the Government’s failed plans are.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the chance to speak in this important debate.
Our economy continues to face challenging times, with the crisis in the eurozone and ongoing problems in the global capital markets. The Government’s plan for recovery is therefore more important than ever, and entrepreneurs play a vital role in taking it forward. Our everyday entrepreneurs are critical to the agenda of innovation, job creation and economic growth; it is not just down to the Government.
In Macclesfield we have been doing all we can to support our vital small and medium-sized enterprises, with bi-monthly breakfasts at which up to 130 businesses come together to work out what can be done to strengthen the local economy. We also have an economic forum to implement the action plans that are needed, but it is clear that what entrepreneurs in Macclesfield and across the country want is a sound economic framework and sound economic policies to support them in their work.
Sadly, entrepreneurs are living with the legacy of not just the previous Government’s deficit but the £90 billion a year cost of new regulations on businesses that have been put in place over the past 13 years. That additional cost makes the difference between profit and loss for small businesses. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) has already pointed out that our regulatory burden puts us 89th out of 139 countries in the perception of the weight of regulation. That has to change.
It is not just domestic regulation that is entangling our entrepreneurs, because the European Union has become a major source of red tape. Since 1997 the EU has produced 100,000 pages of new regulations that tie the hands of our SMEs and damage our economic potential. That must change.
There are several important priorities in building the entrepreneurial economy that Government Members want to see. We want to see a reversal of the regulatory tide, the simplification of UK employment law and the realisation of our SMEs’ export potential. The Government are already working very hard in those areas and have introduced a one-in, one-out approach to regulation, which will be vital. We have already seen the removal of 257 regulations in the retail sector alone. The new three-year moratorium on new regulation for the smallest firms will help to protect start-ups during their most vulnerable phase, and the red tape challenge will encourage businesses to identify the regulations that are preventing them from doing the things they need to do. Those are positive steps in stemming the tide of regulation.
In addition, we need to do more to simplify employment law, which, given that job creation is vital to our economic recovery, is a huge priority. As has been said, the Chancellor has done a great job in introducing an extension of the qualification period for unfair dismissal. That is a way of reducing risk for employers when they are taking on new staff, and it has been welcomed by many SME trade bodies.
Another area that needs to be worked on is realising the potential abroad of our entrepreneurial talent. A report by the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills found that only one third of our SMEs are involved in international trade. Germany has a much higher percentage. The role of UK Trade & Investment is vital in that respect. It is extending its reach to more businesses, but when we look at the potential and the entrepreneurial flare of the 5 million SMEs in this country, it is clear that more needs to be done in communicating those great opportunities in overseas markets. We need to do more to help small businesses to do that.
The Government are working to improve the conditions for economic growth, but, as in a human body, not all growth in the economy is good, which the record of the previous Government shows very clearly. We had unprecedented growth in the deficit, the burden of debt and the weight of business regulation. In the good times, they could have created the economic equivalent of an entrepreneurial athlete, but they instead created an economy that was more like a couch potato, bloated on debt and ill prepared for the downturn. We are changing that.
The Government clearly cannot and should not seek to build an entrepreneurial economy by themselves. They are working with small businesses to create the conditions that will unlock the potential of our entrepreneurial, everyday heroes. Our SMEs also have a responsibility in that task. Now is the time for them to demonstrate the same energy, commitment and creativity that is required in the marketplace to help constructively to shape Government policy.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Having listened for an hour and a half to the two Front Benchers, I suggest that we put them in a ring in Westminster Hall the next time we debate the economy—we could charge the public a little fee, which would be a modest contribution to deficit reduction—and allow the rest of us a little more time to discuss the economy.
First, I want to make some points that might be of particular interest to Labour Front Benchers—I trust that they will be noted in detail. I congratulate Labour Front Benchers on two major changes in the past three weeks. I mentioned the first change earlier—the change of policy on VAT. The previous policy, which I disagreed with in the Chamber, was that the Labour party was in favour of a permanent VAT reduction. Now, the policy is for a temporary reduction—from what the shadow Chancellor said, it appears that there would be a 12-month temporary reduction.
The figures are huge. Just in the next Parliament, that change in policy will mean that £50 billion will be available to a new Labour Government from revenues to the Exchequer. In the context of a snap election, potentially £20 billion extra would go into the Exchequer in the next three years. Those are major sums, and I therefore congratulate Labour Front Benchers on that huge change in policy.
That is not the only change in policy—I would recommend the second policy change to the Government, and I should like to hear in the winding-up speeches whether they are prepared to adopt it. Labour’s policy now is that all moneys from the privatisation of the more recently part-nationalised banks will go 100% to offset the debt. That ought explicitly to be the policy of the Government. I trust that they are not thinking of creating youth unemployment now to delay for give-away Budgets just before the election. The electorate, as well as business, will not forgive them for that.
This Government have adopted an economic policy of Japanisation. They are adopting the Japan Government’s approach, and anyone who wants to see precisely where they are going needs to look at the economic history of Japan over the past 20 years.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
It is not the Japanese approach. The Japanese Government have enormously increased their national debt, while we are going to reduce it.
John Mann
On inflation and monetary policy, this is precisely the Japanese model, but it does not work, which is why there is already £46 billion in additional debt. The lesson from Japan is that we cannot deal with the debt without growth. That is the lesson that the Government are not listening to. I recommend that Members on both sides of the House read up on the economic history of Japan.
I say to the Labour Front-Bench team that we need to be more specific about the cuts that we would make. I realise that on welfare, for example, we cannot be specific. Like the Government, we are in favour of major change, but we do not know whether that will be successful. The fact is that the state will shrink over the next few Parliaments—there is no other way to pay for our deficit reduction plans or the Government’s less coherent plans. We have to pay back the debt. The Government want to pay it all back now, while we are saying, in essence, “No, we wouldn’t pay back as much now, but it would be paid back in future years.” That is the key difference. Either way, it means that the state will have to shrink in future years, and I can suggest some things that we should be stating.
What about Government Departments? Housing costs nine times as much in London as in Bassetlaw. I am not suggesting that a major Department should move to Bassetlaw—although we have the land—but there are Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham and many other places. Let us see the Department for Culture, Media and Sport shifted to Manchester with the BBC. Let us see the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills shifted. Let us see the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shifted. Let us see huge Departments, in their entirety, shifted out to the regions of England. That would give a boost to economic growth and bring permanent savings to the Exchequer. That ought to be part of our policy.
There are other smaller things that we could do. What about the British Council? What a nonsense of an organisation to sustain! We could take some of that money and give it to British universities to do English-language training abroad and build their business base in emerging markets. At the same time, that would reduce costs. What about unitary authorities? Of course, many Members, being ex-councillors, do not want to get rid of unitary authorities. What nonsense! There are 27 press officers in Nottinghamshire and 10 chief executives, with head offices all over the place. Scrap them! Scrap large numbers of councils! What about the police? We cannot merge the police, but we can merge their headquarters. We could rationalise NHS buildings across the county. There is a vast array of things that we could do. There are the British Army bases in Germany. We could reduce the size of the base in Cyprus. We should be levying at least 5% on the UK Crown dependencies to which we provide security. We should offer a permanent reduction in national insurance for small businesses to get young people into apprenticeships and back into work.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). I was rather shocked to find myself agreeing with a number of his constructive suggestions, which highlights the fact that this debate has been one of contrasts. There have been some very constructive contributions from Members on both sides of the House on how we can do more to encourage growth, but some have been disappointingly partisan. Our constituents expect us to give wise counsel when discussing important issues such as job creation and economic growth, not to engage in party political spats.
I think that we would all agree that the contraction of the economy and the financial crisis were inevitably going to impact on economic growth. The major fault line between the two sides of the House appears to be the role that the Government can play in addressing that. The Opposition keep repeating their call that the Government must slow the rate at which we are cutting, but the irresponsible thing to do was to spend more than the country could afford in the first place. Trying to right that wrong by spending more money that we do not have is not the way to fuel growth. At the heart of the Opposition’s motion is the notion that Government spending can pull us out of the recession, but again that is simply not the case. It is time the Labour party learned that it is people and businesses that generate wealth, not the Government. It is our job as a Government to facilitate and enable private businesses, not to try to spend our way out of recession and load those businesses and individual owners with higher tax bills to meet that spending and to service the inevitable debt.
Some Opposition Members have done their best to highlight everything that is ill in the world, but we also have to recognise that a lot is going well in this country. Only last week my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), the Minister responsible for shipping, came down to the borough of Thurrock to celebrate the investment in Britain’s new global shipping port and logistics centre. That investment of more than $1 billion represents the largest job-creation project in this country at present, with the potential to create up to 36,000 jobs in what will be Europe’s largest logistics park and, in the short term, 1,000 jobs as the next phase of the project kicks off.
However, the port’s contribution to the economy does not end there. Rather, it is a great illustration of how private investment in one place has a positive effect throughout the local economy. Businesses around the region—27 million people will be within half a day of the port—will be able to take advantage of a more cost-effective way of getting goods into and out of the country. The facility will transform our maritime port infrastructure and play a massive role in helping Britain’s economy over the coming years. It is a real force for competitiveness and illustrates the impact of good private investment.
That is not the only investment taking place in my area. The port of Tilbury, now in its 125th year, is also investing in expansion. There is also massive investment at Tilbury power station to create the world’s largest dedicated biomass power station, which will be contributing to the national grid before the end of the year. Those are just a few examples of how private business is generating the investment that will create more jobs and add more wealth to the bottom line of the UK economy. The answer is not Government spending; it is private sector investment. Those examples show that Britain is open for business and that private sector companies have the confidence to invest in the UK.
When the Opposition highlight what is going wrong, they are talking our economy down. We have a lot to offer in this country and we should be encouraging it. One thing that has been mentioned is access to finance for small and medium-sized businesses. Only last week I visited Barclays bank in my constituency, where I was told how much money the bank had been able to lend to businesses. However, the complaint was that although money was still available in the pot, small businesses were not coming for finance because of the narrative coming from the Opposition Benches about how it was not available. Let me say this to Opposition Members. Please stop talking our economy down. What they say will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. We have a lot to offer in this country; it is about time we encouraged it, not beat it up.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Today we are talking about this Government’s 18 months of turning growth into stagnation and how they are essentially borrowing to cut. “A manufacturing export-led recovery” is the Government’s phrase—something I agree with—but those words sound as hollow as the Tory conference floor during the Prime Minister’s conference speech. The industrial production numbers for August coupled with a quarterly poll from the British Chambers of Commerce point to the reality of long economic stagnation. Industrial output was up 0.2% between July and August, but that was entirely due to volatile energy and utility sector prices. Manufacturing output was down 0.3% month on month—much worse than predicted—with export order prospects at their worst for two years according to the BCC.
In retail, consumers are spending less than a year ago, as domestic spending runs below inflation. For all the talk of an export-led manufacturing policy, the Government are still completely reliant on an ever-falling pound in relation to the dollar. However, that is by no means an industrial strategy, and it is certainly not industrial activism, especially as LEPs—another Government growth policy—still have no discernible powers. Nor do they have budgets or money, making them easy to organise, as they do not need accounts departments. Enterprise zones are vague, while funding for the regional growth fund nationally in England is, as we all know, lower than the pot of cash for the Post Office mutualisation fund. Indeed, we have waited six months for the RGF to be financed, but we have still received no answer from the Government Front Benchers about when that money will come through.
Tom Blenkinsop
I am sorry, but I am not taking any interventions because of the time.
Those on the Government Front Bench talk about an employee having to work for 24 months before being eligible for employment rights, but that might give the Government some difficulty, because it would run counter to the interests of new starters—young people seeking work, as well as apprentices. If the Government elongate the time to 24 months, it will be easier for a company to sack an apprentice.
Today in the north-east, we have seen a reduction in employment of 17,000, an increase in unemployment of 19,000 and a 1,500 increase in those claiming jobseeker’s allowance. We have seen the highest UK unemployment since 1994. What is the cost to the Treasury and the taxpayer in benefits? The situation also damages demand in the economy.
Tom Blenkinsop
I am sorry, but I am going to continue.
Industry is withholding spending. Small businesses seeking capital cannot get it except at exorbitant rates, and those that do have capital are holding it as cash and not investing. Large industries with access to the money markets are still holding off, as there is no national state capital underwriting or guarantees. This all comes down to confidence. In an article in The Times yesterday entitled “Here comes the double-dip, say finance chiefs”, Ian Stewart, Deloitte’s chief economist, was quoted as saying:
“Although corporates have the firepower to expand, at the moment their trepidation is with growth, so they are cycling back to exactly what they were doing in late 2008, which is cutting costs and building up cash.”
The most troubling factor is the Chancellor’s deficit reduction plan. It was predicated on 3% growth, but we have had less than 0.2% growth since May 2010. This means that his plan is out of kilter with reality. The Office for Budget Responsibility predicted £46 billion extra borrowing by this Government, but that figure is now rising. Sure enough, this Tory-Lib Dem Government will have to borrow half a trillion pounds. However, unlike the Labour Government, who borrowed for growth, this Government are borrowing to cut, and they are cutting too fast and too deep.
The hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) referred to savings surplus economies such as China, Germany and Japan. They are also manufacturing surplus economies. We were one of those, back in the 1980s, until the decimation of the coal, steel and chemical industries, all of which used to exist in my area. Under the 13 years of Labour government, we saw record investment in industry. I speak as someone who worked, and got his hands dirty, in industry. That Government invested in industry at record levels. We set up organisations such as NEPIC—the North East of England Process Industry Cluster—and One North East, which had a budget of £2 billion. We gave businesses leadership, and we gave those organisations the cash to bring businesses in. We saw more than 60 chemical companies come to Teesside, but now we have seen the closure of the Teesside Beam Mill and the loss of 1,500 jobs in the steel industry from Scunthorpe to Teesside. Job losses at BAE Systems and Bombardier are also just round the corner. This Government need to reassess their policy very fast.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
I will not take any interventions, as that would leave less time for others to speak.
The Opposition are complaining that the forecasts show that the Government will have to borrow £46 billion more than was previously forecast. Their solution is to borrow more money. They are proposing to borrow an additional £31 billion in any one year—I think that that is the precise figure. I asked the shadow Chancellor what he thought the limit on borrowing should be, but he did not answer the question. One presumes therefore that he has no idea what the limit is. Well, the limit on borrowing is called the International Monetary Fund, when it has to come to the rescue when the markets will not fund a country’s deficit.
The reality is that the interest rates on deficits matter, because they represent a perception of the risk of non-repayment, and of the possibility that a Government will become insolvent. The difficulty is that, as a country increases its deficit, it also increases that interest rate. Gradually, the interest rate increases on the whole of Government debt, not just that borrowed in one year. If the whole of Government debt is in the order of £1 trillion, 1% of that is £10 billion. That £10 billion has to be found either from additional taxes over time, or from additional cuts. Labour’s strategy would lead to greater cuts or greater taxes in the long term—probably greater cuts.
Let us look at how we have got into this situation. An interesting person to turn to for quotations on this is Lord Turnbull, who was the Cabinet Secretary at the start of the third Blair Government. He said that excessive borrowing started to be a problem from 2005. I quote him:
“It kind of crept up on us in 2005, 2006, 2007, and we were still expanding public spending at 4.5% a year”,
and he argued that the Treasury should have put more money aside. He said last year that the primary reason Britain was
“in the mess that we’re in”
was that
“public spending got too big relative to the productive resources of the economy, by error”.
He added that a loss of output caused by the financial crisis also contributed to the Budget deficit. The mistake is thinking that the problem is caused by one thing alone. There are a number of factors: one is the banking problem; another is overspending by the previous Labour Government.
What we have before us is a motion to deal with a problem caused partly by overspending, to which the proposed solution is yet more spending. In this instance, that means borrowing by the Government for private spending, to be fair, although a cut in VAT on a temporary basis does not generally feed into people’s pockets, but into those of the corporations that do not reduce their prices and do not have to pay so much tax.
In his memoirs, Tony Blair proposed what should have been done. On page 679, we can read him reflecting on what should have been done, consistent with his analysis of the economy:
“In my view, we should have taken a New Labour way out of the economic crisis: kept direct tax rates competitive, had a gradual rise in VAT and other indirect taxes to close the deficit, and used the crisis to push further and faster on reform.”
Tony Blair was clear that Labour should have put up VAT.
I kept my ballot paper for the Labour leadership election; I did not think it was right for me to fill it in. One interesting thing about that ballot paper was that it came along with the manifestos of the candidates. I looked at the entry for the shadow Chancellor, who said that he had been “leading the fight” against the VAT rise. Last year, he led the fight against the VAT rise; now he says, “Yes, we need the VAT in the long term”, as at least the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) recognises; he must have managed to persuade him.
What question needs to be asked? The Government have a strategy, and the strategy is reducing the deficit. There are obviously difficulties, given that the solution must be worldwide. Is it therefore right to follow the Labour party’s example and borrow yet more money—another £31,000 million a year—increasing the debt and potentially increasing the need for rescue in the long term, or should we keep on with the strategy we have? My view is that we should keep to the strategy that we have got.
Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I knew something was desperately wrong with Government economic policy when I heard last week that the Prime Minister had to be forcibly restrained from telling us all to pay off our credit card debts. It was as though he had never taken a degree at Oxford in PPE—politics, philosophy and economics—with first-class honours or had learned nothing from it. I think his father would be well qualified to ask for his money back from Oxford, because that goes directly against Keynes’s advice on the savings fallacy, which is “The more you save, the more you compound recession.” It also runs against the advice of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which predicated what pathetic growth is going to occur the next year on consumers building up consumer debt to pay for products, increasing demand.
I cannot launch the same accusation against the Chancellor because he took a history degree. He does understand economics, but as far as I can see he thinks he is the reincarnation of Montagu Norman: he has the same policy and economics as him. Neither of them, in their obsession with debt and borrowing—also well exemplified in the last speech—shows any consideration, or knowledge, of demand. Because demand is so weak in our economy, there will be no investment, and if there is no investment, there is no increase in production and no increase in employment. If there is no increase in either of them, there is no growth, yet it is only growth that will allow us to pay off the debt we have accumulated. Demand is the key problem, and the obsession with debt obscures it. Instead, the Government compound the problem by cuts that are going to kill recovery.
The folly of that is that we are freer than any other country to act for ourselves and to take measures to expand the economy and boost demand. Europe is locked into the euro crisis—a self-generated crisis—from which we were saved by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), who, thank heavens, kept us out of the euro. Greece and the other Club Med economies, which must include Ireland now that the gulf stream is warming up the Irish economy, cannot devalue or escape from the crisis by reducing interest rates, so they are trapped. We are not. We can reduce interest rates, and we can devalue; indeed, we have devalued. We can use all the weapons of economic management that the euro prevents.
Nor are we in the same trap as America. Its President is effectively trapped by a Republican Congress whose members have “Tea Party economics” embossed on their foreheads, and can neither increase taxation nor boost spending. We are free to act—yet that freedom has been abused by action that is directly counter-productive, and based on piggy-bank economics rather than any manifestation of economic sense. Such a policy would be appropriate for a Government of millionaires who could sit comfortably on the piles of their money and say, “A few more sacrifices from the working class, a few more unemployed, a few more public servants fired, and we’ll all be better off: Britain will win through thanks to the sacrifices of other people.” However, it bears no relation to economic sense, so it will not work.
Our recovery was always going to be slower. The recession hit harder here because of the exaggerated financial sector that has resulted from the destruction of so much of our manufacturing—particularly the Thatcher destruction of the 1980s—and the fact that so much of it is now foreign-owned. However, we must not compound our difficulty and make recovery even slower by dragging out a period of low growth. Unless policy is reversed and we have a plan B—I have a name for the great day when policy is reversed; I am going to call it national B-Day—we shall be doomed to a winter that will be hard, miserable and tough, in which unemployment will increase, more people will be put out of work to increase Government borrowing and Government debt, and more small businesses will be destroyed.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I welcome the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) to her Front-Bench position, and wish her all the best in it. It has been fascinating to listen to some of the speeches made by Members sitting behind her. We heard, for instance, the “Tale of One City”, the wonderful city of Middlesbrough. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) emphasised the importance of the enterprise zone in securing jobs in the new businesses coming to the city, while the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) essentially “dissed” the whole project. I hope that Middlesbrough has the future predicted by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough rather than that predicted by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland.
In discussing this motion about jobs and growth, Opposition Members have tended to refer to public sector jobs and growth while those on our Benches have understandably referred more to the private sector. We know that every penny spent by the state must be created by those who are demonised by a number of Opposition Members, especially the Leader of the Opposition, as those nasty, awful people, the wealth creators of the nation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) reminded us, it is people and businesses who generate wealth, not the Government.
Businesses such as Cummins, Ford, Tesco, DHL and hundreds of smaller manufacturing businesses are all creating jobs in my constituency at this moment. I note that the hon. Member for Leeds West has not tried to intervene to remind me about the job statistics in my constituency. Under Labour between August 2006 and August 2010, soon after the present Government came to office, the number of jobseekers nearly doubled. Under this Government it has fallen by a small handful, and the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance for more than 12 months has dropped by a third. That is because we have a healthy private sector that we are trying to encourage in the best ways available to us.
I wonder which of the businesses whose names I read out earlier—Cummins, Ford, Tesco and DHL, those horrible big businesses—are among the predatory businesses that the Leader of the Opposition said, in his conference speech, that he or his civil servants would blacklist: businesses such as the awful AA, those terrible people from Saga, McVities, or—my God, even worse than that—the people from Boots!
I am lucky, as my constituency has a dynamic district council that is doing its best on planning and encouraging growth. We have also been lucky in that our bid to have a university technical college based in the constituency was successful. We know that future jobs growth must be sustainable; it needs to be for the local market, and it needs to provide relevant jobs for relevant industries.
This strategy is working in Daventry. When people driving up the M1 reach junction 18 they see big sheds on the left. That is DERFT—the Daventry international rail freight terminal. Some 9,000 new jobs will be created if DERFT 3 goes ahead.
We want to encourage small business. The Labour party has always had a plan for that, too—it has a good reputation in encouraging small business—but our plan is different. Labour’s plan was to take a big business and add a shed-load of regulation—in which case, sure enough, we will absolutely get a small business—whereas our plan is to make sure we encourage people to take that tiny bit of risk required in business by deregulating as much as possible and having a flexible job market that enables them to create jobs.
My background is not the same as that of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, as I did run my own business. I worked nights for 11 years importing and wholesaling fruit and veg. Alas, however—the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) is wrong about this—I am not a millionaire. I do not even aspire to be one. What I want to do is make sure that my constituents who do aspire to be millionaires get the opportunity to achieve that, and running a small business is a very good way to start.
If we want to encourage jobs and growth, we need to make small businesses more successful. Therefore, we need to reduce regulation, so I welcome the national insurance measures we have introduced, but I think the Government can do much better on relaxing procurement rules to enable small businesses to bid for county council contracts without having to go through pages of needless paperwork. To allow small businesses to succeed, therefore, we need more flexible labour markets and less regulation, and we also need to sort out Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
Today, we were once again treated to a typically knockabout speech from the Chancellor. It was founded on the entirely specious notion that the cost of implementing the five points put forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) would be £27 billion, of which £15 billion is supposed to represent speculative market response. In fact, however, if any Government were to come forward with a plausible growth policy, it would almost certainly be greeted with a positive market reaction.
The key problem for the British economy today is not indebtedness; rather, it is lack of demand. The UK debt-to-GDP ratio is, in fact, quite modest, but Government cuts are clearly worsening the problem of lack of demand while hardly reducing the deficit at all because of falling tax revenues and rising unemployment. At present, for every 2.7 jobs lost in the public sector, only one is being created in the private sector.
The alternative policy is a public sector-driven jobs and growth strategy. That is the only way to get out of slump when the private sector contracts, which it is doing at present. We must get people off the dole, thus reducing the enormous cost of benefits, and get them into work where they can contribute to tax revenues as well as regain their independence. Keeping 1 million people on the dole costs £7 billion a year. For the same amount of money, 400,000 jobs could be created.
The Chancellor always says at this point, “Yes, but how’s it going to be paid for?” Well, I will tell him. It need not be paid for by borrowing at all. First, the growth dividend even from a miserable 1.5% growth a year still yields an extra £40 billion in Government revenues over four years. A financial activities tax in the City at even the modest rate of 0.05% would raise about £20 billion a year. The Chancellor changed the controlled foreign company rules and those for capital gains tax, capital allowances and inheritance tax. The only beneficiaries of those changes are corporations and the very rich, and they will deprive the Exchequer of a further £2 billion a year over the next few years. That money could have been used to create jobs. The reason the Government are not going to do any of those things is, of course, that they have an ideological hang-up about the public sector. The whole point about the massive cuts programme is that it provides the opportunity that the Conservative party has been awaiting for so long to squeeze the welfare system, shrink the state and make, once and for all, the transition from the public sector to a fully privatised economy.
The Chancellor has two answers to the important question about from where we get future growth. He says that it is by returning as quickly as possible to the pre-financial crash neo-liberalism City dominance. That is not tenable and it is not sustainable after what has happened. Secondly, he says that it is through private borrowing. Extraordinarily, the Chancellor, who rightly said before the election that private borrowing was out of control, is now proposing—this is the last resort of a pretty desperate man—to rack it up from its current level of £1.5 trillion to more than £2 trillion by 2015, which is an increase of 35%, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Of course that probably will not happen, but if it did it would certainly lay the foundations for an even bigger financial crash next time around.
My final point is that the elephant in the room, the state of manufacturing industry, is simply being ignored and neglected by the Government. Last year, the UK deficit on trade in goods was £100 billion—6.8% of GDP. That is simply not sustainable. We need a smaller City, and a bigger and more robust manufacturing sector. That means putting far more resources into improving manufacturing productivity; skills training; protecting strategic sectors of our economy from foreign takeovers; restoring supply chains in key sectors, which have been broken up by over-ready selling up; incentivising an increase in market share over short-term profiteering; and helping small and medium-sized enterprises to upgrade to be higher tech, so that they are less exposed to Asian competition. The Opposition do have a plan for growth. Until the Government come forward with a plan for growth, they do not have an economic policy worth the name.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), and I share some of his concerns about the outright dominance of the City. I wish to draw the House’s attention to my declaration of interests in relation to Cobden Partners.
We are in the midst of this jobs and growth crisis, so I feel that we should ask ourselves where jobs and growth came from, where they have gone and where they will come from in future. We know that this is a debt crisis, so why did people borrow so much and save too little? It was because interest rates were too low for too long. Anybody who has a savings account or a mortgage will know that it is the Bank of England which in the UK determines the height of the interest rates market. The set-up of our monetary system means that money is loaned into existence. It has been an institutionally inflationary monetary system since the end of Bretton Woods.
My argument, which is one Hayek advanced in his Nobel lecture, is that when employment comes from an increase in the money supply, that employment lasts only as long as the money supply increases, or perhaps only as long as it continues to accelerate. My preferred measure of the money supply comes from Kaleidic Economics. If we look at it, we find that from 2002 the money supply not only increased, but accelerated in its increase—the level was above 10% from 2004 and in 2007 it went as high as 27% by that measure. The money supply is now contracting at a rate of about 5% a year.
I am delighted to see the previous Chancellor in his place, because had he accepted my intervention earlier I would have said to him that at the time he left power there did appear to be growth, but that it was simply quantitative easing washing through the system, distorting the overall GDP numbers and causing the impression of growth. In fact, we had further money entering the system, distorting the structure of relative prices and making the problem worse later.
If we examine the Office for National Statistics price index going back to 1750—at least one of my hon. Friends will remember—we find that we have had the most astonishing currency debasement since 1971. Indeed, in the 19th century prices experienced secular deflation, and had an ordinary person saved £1 in 1800, they would have been able to buy a larger basket of goods with it in 1900. Had that person saved £1 in 1971, they would be extremely disappointed today.
Inflation is not harmless. It widens wealth inequality and creates patterns of employment that are sustained only by increases in the money supply. For those of us who are sincerely concerned about jobs and growth, it is time to consider whether we should not expect to create employment simply by increasing the money supply. It seems to me that we are now boxed into a corner. We know that we have got into this mess through low interest rates, yet we cannot now afford to allow interest rates to rise—far too many people are far too indebted. That leaves the Government with something of a problem and I think they are right to think extremely carefully about how we can achieve deleveraging. The Chancellor is correct, and has been for some time, to call for an economy based on “save and invest” and on real productive savings. It does not do to expand the money supply in excess of real savings, by which I mean prior production and consumption that is less than that production. The accumulation of capital is the only sustainable way to raise real wages for normal people.
I encourage the Government to stick to their policy of encouraging save and invest, but I express misgivings about quantitative easing. I ask them to look at the theories of the monetary effects on the trade cycle and whether patterns of employment have been sustained by increases in the money supply. As we go forward, I ask them to consider extremely carefully whether we need to go somewhat further than Vickers in creating the right monetary system on which to build a sustainable economy.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to be called to speak in the debate, and a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker). As a history graduate, I have enjoyed the history lessons during this afternoon’s debate. I enjoyed the intervention from the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), telling me all about the ’40s, ’60s and ’70s. I have heard many Members tell me what happened under a Labour Government long before I was born, but it seems to me that we have always bounced back to the same point: those on the Tory Benches say that it is all Labour’s fault, while we say that it is all the Tories’ fault. The truth is, where is that getting us?
In my constituency, 2,000 people are claiming jobseeker’s allowance. Some 40% of those are under the age of 24. Behind those figures, there are real human tragedies: kids leaving school believing that there is no hope for the future other than being driven—let us hope not—into the hands of drug dealers or becoming involved in crime; the hard-working father who comes home one night and says to his family, “I’ve been made redundant after 20 years,” and his wife who worries; the single parent who is bringing up children on her own and who has just lost her job. What does she do? It is all very well quoting statistics and figures, but what can we do for those people?
Unemployment is not a price worth paying. For me, anybody losing their job is a total tragedy. That is why the motion is so important: we should use bankers’ bonuses to create youth jobs and do something to help people, not after being out of work for six months, as the Prime Minister said in his speech, but from day one. I remember when I was a trade union official and jobs were going as, unfortunately, they were being offshored. A scheme was created so that when people were made redundant the company matched half their redundancy to be used for training. Some people decided to become driving instructors, whereas others in the Solent decided to become ship builders, and so on. It interested them and that was what they wanted to do. I want some incentive in the tax system for companies that make people redundant to use similar ideas.
Chris Evans
I am sorry, I cannot take an intervention because other people want to speak, although I would love to give way to the hon. Gentleman.
As I was saying, when a person is unemployed—I do not know how many people in the Chamber have been unemployed—it is soul destroying. It reduces confidence and, in the worst cases, it brings about depression. If anybody wants to see a microcosm of the economy, they should walk down the local high street. There is nothing more sad and depressing than seeing the butcher, the baker and even the candlestick maker all boarded up. Nothing says more clearly that the economy is not working.
So what can we do? We could reduce VAT on a temporary basis to encourage people to come back to the high street, but we could do more than that. We could encourage local authorities to reduce their business rates so that people can stay in their businesses and we could encourage communities to come in so that these places are not boarded up. Above all, we could ask authorities to start providing free car parking. That might be a bit more simplistic than the credit swaps we have heard about, but I am concerned.
I am going to say something quite shocking which is not in vogue at the moment. This afternoon, I spoke to Lloyds TSB and I thought, “It's all very well to bash the banks”—and we should bash those who have been responsible—"but we have to make an assertion and realise that only one part of the banking industry failed." It was not the retail banker or the cashier in Blackwood High street or Newbridge, who serves their community; it was the bankers in the City, and that part should be reformed. However, we have to be very careful when we talk about reform. We cannot introduce regulation that hinders financial innovation. That would be impossible, and I am very concerned about that.
We have to ask ourselves how we are going to encourage manufacturing when we do not encourage banks. I will be honest: I have been one of the banks’ biggest critics, but at the moment we are asking them to do something that is almost impossible—we are asking them to save money and lend at the same time. How will they do that? I do not know, but tonight I will walk through the Lobby and support the motion, because I genuinely believe that we need to do something to promote growth.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
I am pleased to speak at this late stage and it is a joy to follow a Welshman who spoke, in all his eloquence, about unemployment. I should like to let him know that Government Members understand the devastation that a single extra person becoming unemployed can cause to families. Many Government Members have been through that, but the problem for us in voting for the motion is this: how can we go back to our electorate and say that we voted for a motion that talks about “sustainable” deficit reduction without mentioning any figures or its implications? The motion talks about “a steadier deficit plan”, but I should have thought that the Chancellor was pretty steady about the deficit reduction plan and that we were pretty steadily behind that plan. At least we are prepared to say where it is and what the figures are.
The Opposition talk about a credible strategy for growth. In some senses, I want to follow the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and others who have tried to introduce a degree of practicality into the debate and provide some suggestions about dealing with the difficulties we are facing. Let me outline my problems with the five-point plan for growth. I will not be churlish by suggesting that it is only five points and not six. There had to be only five points on those little cards that we used to have at election time, because six or seven was too many.
Let us look at the detail of the five-point plan. We can see that Opposition Front Benchers have moved somewhat on the VAT issue and are now talking about a temporary cut. I have always thought, in terms of economics, that temporary proposals sound a bit suspicious both to me and to my voters as we do not think that they will have any real impact.
This Government are acting to promote long-standing infrastructure growth, as other hon. Members, such as my hon. Friends the Members for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), have said. They pointed to the dualling of the A11 and I shall point to the M6 Lancaster-Heysham link in Lancashire, which has been on the stocks since 1948. It has taken this coalition Government to put money into that, but it is actually happening.
The proposal for a one-year national tax break for small firms taking on extra workers seems suspiciously like the coalition’s proposal for a national insurance holiday for new companies, except those in the south-east and the east, for up to 10 workers. That is where Opposition Front Benchers have missed a trick because nothing in their proposal would help us regionally in the north. At least the coalition Government have recognised the mistakes of the previous Government in that London and the south-east did not need an extra regional development agency or the other additions. This is about the balance between the north and the south, but the Opposition’s proposal completely ignores that and wipes it away. That is a mistake.
The Opposition are following along the right lines of our proposals, but their proposals are a mistake. That is why I want to get to the bottom of the five-point plan, which does not help what the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) and Government Members have said is the key to this issue—small business. In my constituency, every two weeks I see a small business that has the potential for orders, and that needs that an extra shed or machine to meet those orders, or that could take on an extra few people, but cannot get the capital. The Federation of Small Businesses has said that 30% of small businesses are in that position—they are missing out on capturing growth because of a lack of capital investment. That is why I welcome the coalition’s plan for credit easing in the autumn statement. That is vital.
I welcome the decision to give Lancashire an enterprise zone. The problem with enterprise zones in the past was the relocation of existing businesses. I have a suggestion for the Government: I do not see why we do not declare every university campus an enterprise zone. Overnight it would create what we are supposed to be helping to create: new-scale business.
There is a need out there. There are businesses with orders, but we need the credibility that the Government have given to the finances. I look forward to the autumn statement, and to building on what I believe is a sustainable amount of growth, and sustainable support for small business.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
May I say what a pleasure it was to work with the shadow Chancellor and the rest of the shadow Treasury team over the past year? Although I have moved on to pastures new, I am very happy to speak in support of their motion today.
As we have heard, in the past nine months, the UK economy has not grown at all. Forecasts have had to be revised downwards, and the future prospects for growth are bleak, given the scale of Government cuts and the Chancellor’s failure to acknowledge that in fragile economic times a slash-and-burn policy, far from stimulating growth and bringing down the deficit, will cause growth to flatline. It will actually cost us more as a result of decreasing tax receipts, increasing benefit payments, people having less money to spend, and the Government having to borrow £46 billion more than they thought they would.
As the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, warned that slamming on the brakes too quickly will hurt the recovery and worsen job prospects, yet the Chancellor is failing to heed the warning signs. Economic indicators such as today’s unemployment figures, which are devastating for people in areas such as my constituency, tell the Chancellor that not only is he going too fast, but he is on completely the wrong road. We do need to reduce the deficit, but at a pace that does not harm economic growth. Labour’s plan for growth involves bringing forward long-term investment projects for schools, roads and transport, building 25,000 more affordable homes, and creating 100,000 jobs for young people, funded by a £2-billion tax on bankers’ bonuses. That is what my constituents want a Government to do.
In my constituency, I see the impact of Government policies mounting up in a multitude of individually small but cumulatively large ways. For example, there is the public sector worker who has had a pay freeze, is paying 2.5% more VAT, has had their child care tax credits cut from 80% to 70%, and will soon have to contribute 3% more to their pension. That is not to mention the rise in inflation, how much more it costs to fill a tank with petrol, ever-rising fuel bills, or the extra pounds that the weekly food shopping costs. There are also the local services that people now have to pay for, and that used not to come at a cost.
This week, we have heard a stark warning from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation about the impact that the Government’s policies are having on child poverty. I was there, in the previous Parliament, when all the party leaders and MPs from all parties rushed to sign up to the child poverty pledge to commit to abolishing child poverty within a generation. There was a cosy air of cross-party consensus. As one of the MPs who had been working closely with the End Child Poverty coalition, I did not want to say or do anything to derail that, but I was quietly highly sceptical. There were warm words and MPs posing with marker pens as they signed the pledge as part of a photo opportunity, so that they would appear in their local papers.
Kerry McCarthy
No, I do not have time. I was highly sceptical that the pledges would translate into real action if the Conservative party got into Government. Sadly, my scepticism has proved well founded. The IFS warned yesterday that the Government’s tax and benefit changes will push 400,000 children into relative poverty by 2015. The number of children in absolute poverty will rise by 500,000 to 3 million. Instead of us eradicating child poverty by 2020, the Government’s policies mean that 3.3 million children—one in four children in the UK—will be in relative poverty. Labour when in government lifted nearly 1 million children out of poverty; this Government will put another generation of children right back there. It is little wonder that the chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group described it as a “devastating report”. She said:
“Ministers seem to be in denial that, under current policies, their legacy threatens to be the worst poverty record of any government for a generation.”
Sheila Gilmore
Does my hon. Friend agree that on top of the benefit changes, one of the big things that will cause increased child poverty is the increased level of women’s unemployment, particularly because of the huge cuts in the public sector, which will affect women and then affect their children and plunge them into poverty?
Kerry McCarthy
My hon. Friend makes a valid point, which is another sign of the devastating impact of the Government’s policies. As I said, everything mounts up together; taken individually, it might not seem that they are doing much harm, but people are beginning to feel the pain and beginning to realise how much more pain is round the corner, not just for them, but for their children.
In the limited time available to me, I shall talk about unemployment, which in my constituency has risen by almost a quarter in the past year. Bristol was fortunate to be chosen as the site for one of the Government’s new enterprise zones. Unlike the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), I can just about remember what they are called. The council says that that has the potential to create 17,000 new jobs, which is good, but that is over a 25-year period. We need jobs now.
A report by the Work Foundation concluded that
“evidence suggests that Enterprise Zones…are likely to be ineffective at stimulating sustainable economic growth in depressed areas.”
A Centre for Cities report found that the cost of each new job created in enterprise zones over 10 years would be £26,000, which compares with £6,500 to creating a job for a young person under the future jobs fund and just £3,500 for the new deal for young people.
I left school in the 1980s and nearly all my friends spent years on the dole, their prospects of employment bleak, with long spells of unemployment interspersed with the occasional futile training scheme that did nothing to land them a job at the end of it. They thought they would never work, never own their own homes, never be able to afford to have a family. This Government seem intent on recreating that Thatcherite nightmare, with nearly 1 million young people now unemployed. We cannot consign another generation to the scrapheap. Labour’s plans to create 100,000 jobs for young people are what is needed now. That is why I support the motion.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
It is a privilege to wind up this debate as shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I may be new to the job, but after five hours of debate today I am still no clearer on this Government’s plan for jobs and for growth. Even on the day when unemployment has reached a 17-year high, the Government have no plan for jobs and for growth. Today’s numbers are proof that plan A has failed.
While Government Members say that there is no alternative to the policies being pursued by the Government, the Opposition have put forward a five-point plan for jobs and growth which was set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), the shadow Chancellor, and supported by Opposition Members. My right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) reminded us that a year and a half ago, the economy was growing and unemployment was falling. How different from today. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) gave a vivid account of the impact that the Government’s policies are having on constituents in Hackney.
We heard about plans for jobs and growth rooted in the constituency experience from my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds East (Mr Mudie) and for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), my hon. Friends the Members for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell), for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy).
From the Government Benches we also heard some constructive speeches, particularly from the hon. Members for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) and for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). Some Government Members, however, defended plan A 100% but none of them, remarkably, wanted to talk about unemployment in their constituencies. One hon. Member gave a speech not even knowing that unemployment in his constituency was up 29.2% in a year. If that is not proof that plan A has failed, I do not know what is.
Let me rebut some of the Greek myths that we heard from the hon. Members for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) and for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), which they use as a smokescreen for their austerity programme. First, UK debt is just over 60% of GDP; in Greece it is over 150%. Secondly, the average maturity of our debt is roughly 13 years, compared with around six years in Greece. Thirdly, bond yields were falling in the UK ahead of the general election, but they were rising in Greece. Fourthly, Greece is part of the eurozone and so, unlike the UK, cannot devalue its currency. This is a story of two very different economies. The Greek defence for austerity simply does not add up.
I urge hon. Members to look at the facts. We have great British businesses, great British industries, great universities and people in all our constituencies who want to work hard and get on. Let us celebrate and build upon our successes, rather than talking Britain down. Instead of the mantra of resignation and defeat from Government Members, the shadow Chancellor has set out practical policies for jobs and growth. What a contrast and what a different message on how to support families feeling the impact of rising energy and food prices. What a different message to businesses worried about sales and accessing finance. What a different message to young people looking at the prospect of enormous debts when they leave university, with less and less hope of getting a job.
When Labour left office unemployment was falling, but today’s figures show that unemployment, at 2.57 million, is higher now than at any point during the recession, at a level last seen under a Tory Government. Youth unemployment, at 991,000, is the highest ever on record and is inching ever closer to 1 million. Unemployment for women has increased by 40,000 since May and is now above 1 million, the highest level since 1988. Last week’s GDP revisions show that GDP estimates for the second quarter had halved to just 0.1%.
Households are feeling the biggest squeeze on their income for 35 years, but our out-of-touch Prime Minister lectures hard-pressed families to pay off their credit card bills right now. Tell that to the ordinary families coping with the effects of the Government’s VAT hike. Tell that to the struggling small businesses trying to access credit from the banks. Tell that to the anxious young person who cannot even get a job. It is also crazy economics. Of course we all need to be prudent, but the Institute for Public Policy Research has calculated that if everyone were to pay off their credit card debts, consumer spending would be reduced by 6% and GDP would fall by 4%.
Growth has flatlined for nine months, starting before the European debt crisis. We have heard the Chancellor’s excuses. First he blamed the snow, then the royal wedding and now Europe. When will the Government stand up and take responsibility for their actions? The managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, says growth is necessary for fiscal credibility, and she is right. It is because the economy has ground to a halt and unemployment is at 2.57 million that the Office for Budget Responsibility now forecasts that we will borrow £46 billion more over this Parliament than planned.
It is not possible to reduce the budget deficit while paying more in benefits and getting less through taxation. Austerity alone will not reduce the budget deficit without a plan for jobs and growth. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West reminded us, 18 months ago unemployment was falling, and as my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor noted, John Maynard Keynes once said:
“When the facts change, I change my mind.”
John Maynard Keynes was a Liberal, and so too was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. When he was a Liberal he said:
“We are in real danger of condemning a generation of young people to a cycle of unemployment and low expectations.”
How very prescient—on the day when figures reveal that youth unemployment has gone up to 991,000 under his watch. The Liberal Democrats were once progressives, but now they just represent failed economics, implementing the reckless policies that they said before the election would not work.
There has been much debate this afternoon about the growth strategy that the Government promised, instead of which we have simply had a strategy for failure. They increased VAT, costing families £450 a year, and cancelled the loan to Sheffield Forgemasters so that high-skilled jobs are now going to South Korea rather than south Yorkshire. They scrapped the regional development agencies and replaced them with a regional growth fund that is yet to spend a single penny. The Government have introduced what the Governor of the Bank of England described as the “weakest possible measures” to get banks lending—a ringing endorsement of their Project Merlin. Today the Government have announced the guarantee of a job interview for 50,000 young people, but young people want not just an interview but a guaranteed job or training—a real opportunity, which they had under a Labour Government before the general election and before the future jobs fund was scrapped by this Government. With policies such as these from the Government, no wonder the economic recovery has ground to a halt.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
One of the most dreadful things that this Government are doing is that when they do spend money, for example on the rail or helicopter contracts, they do not support British businesses such as Bombardier and AgustaWestland but spend money on jobs and growth abroad. Should we not be spending British taxpayers’ money to preserve British jobs?
Rachel Reeves
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, with 1,000 jobs going at Bombardier and Government policies putting people out of work and businesses out of business.
While the Government offer no relief, at least the Bank of England is offering some leadership, with an extra £75 billion through quantitative easing, which the Chancellor described just two years ago as
“the last resort of desperate governments when all…other policies have failed”.
Let me be frank. The last Labour Government were desperate to avoid a global recession becoming a global depression; desperate to ensure that unemployment did not hit the 3 million mark, as it did in the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s; and desperate to avoid the business failures and home repossessions that scarred our country in Tory recessions. Government Members should be desperate today, because unemployment is at a 17-year high, because borrowing in August reached a record high, because growth has stalled, and because plan A has failed.
Today, as we see the unemployment numbers, it would be nice to have a Government who reacted and said they have got it wrong. Instead, it takes Labour to come to the Chamber with a five-point plan: a £2 billion tax on bank bonuses and a guarantee of a job for young people; bringing forward long-term investment projects to get people back to work; cutting VAT temporarily to give immediate help to our high streets and to struggling families and pensioners; cutting VAT to 5% on home improvement repairs; and a one-year national insurance tax break for every small firm taking on extra workers. That is a five-point alternative that offers hope and unlocks opportunity.
We can call it what we will—plan A-plus, plan B, or the five-point plan—but this Government must come up with an alternative to help families struggling with rising prices and stagnant wages, to help businesses that cannot get a loan and are scared to take on new workers, to help young people who are facing record youth employment, and to help pensioners facing higher gas and electricity bills this winter. This Government must act for every struggling family, for every struggling business, and for every pensioner. They must act, with Labour’s five-point plan, to unlock the potential of every young person in Britain, to create jobs, and to get our economy growing. Their plan has failed. I urge hon. Members to support this motion.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)
This has been a very good debate in which we have heard 31 contributions from Back-Bench colleagues on both sides of the House. The right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) made clear his continuing support for paying our subscriptions to the IMF. We heard particularly passionate speeches by the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), who made strong pitches on behalf of their constituents, as did many other hon. Members.
Let me take this opportunity to congratulate the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury on her appointment. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) made a pitch for her job, but I think she is quite safe. She has a tough job to do in controlling the free-spending instincts of many of her colleagues. The Chancellor referred to the £11 billion cost of a commitment made in amendments that she tabled to the Pensions Bill on her last day as shadow Pensions Minister, and I hope that others will not follow her example.
The shadow Chief Secretary will have to think carefully about whom she asks for advice. Perhaps she could ask the shadow Chancellor, or perhaps not. Perhaps she could ask my predecessor but one, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), who left a message for my predecessor saying that there was no money left. That is not the only message that he has left recently. [Interruption.] Calm down. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) received a message yesterday on her answering machine from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill saying, “Could you put in to speak tomorrow? The shadow Chancellor needs all the help he can get.” It is to be assumed that he had confused my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North with the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who is next to her in the House of Commons telephone directory. Perhaps the shadow Chief Secretary could turn for advice to her former boss, the Governor of the Bank of England, who last year backed this Government’s strong and powerful deficit reduction plan, and who last week reiterated that this Government have a credible plan to repay our debts. In the end, the test for her and her party will be whether they have plans that are in any way credible. On today’s evidence, the answer is no.
I will answer a couple of the questions that have been asked about Labour’s plans. It has set out plans today for the Pensions Bill that would cost an additional £31 billion of debt. Somebody asked what the interest on that would cost. It would cost £1.2 billion a year or £3.2 million a day. That is just on the spending commitments that Labour has made this week.
Likewise, the shadow Chancellor seems somewhat confused about his own policy on the switch from RPI to CPI. As I understand it, he will support the switch, for which I am grateful, for three years. That means that he will seek to reverse it in 2014-15. That would cost an extra £6 billion at the end of this Parliament. The shadow Chief Secretary has her work cut out with the shadow Chancellor, as well as with everyone else. That is why I say that only the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have a credible economic plan.
As many speakers in this debate have recognised, when we came into government we inherited the largest peacetime deficit this country has ever faced. We were borrowing one pound for every four that we spent. We were on a completely unsustainable trajectory, which compelled Standard & Poor’s to put the UK’s triple A rating on negative watch. We had to take the difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions to pull the country out of that hole. We are taking action not because it is easy, but because it is the right thing to do in the national interest. We are already seeing the benefits from our plan.
Sheila Gilmore
I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman will apologise to all the people who voted Liberal Democrat having heard his party say in the election campaign that to cut too fast would be detrimental to the economy.
Danny Alexander
No, I will not because our plan for deficit reduction is necessary to restore the credibility of this country’s finances. If there is any apologising to be done, it is from Opposition Members.
As I was saying, we are already seeing the benefits from our plan. Standard & Poor’s took the UK’s rating off negative watch and reaffirmed our rating in its latest report.
Danny Alexander
I will not give way because I have little time to get through the points made in the debate.
Standard & Poor’s warned that our rating would come under pressure if the Government faltered in their commitment to fiscal consolidation. The markets have also backed us. When we came into government our gilt yields were tracking the likes of Spain and Italy. Since then, our yields have fallen to follow those of Germany.
Our plan makes a real difference to households and businesses. It allows families to stay in their homes and businesses to refinance their debt. As the Chancellor said, without a credible plan, interest rates would rise. A 1% rise in interest rates would take £10 billion out of the pockets of British families through higher mortgage costs, leading to higher repossessions and more job losses. That is the Opposition’s plan.
Ian Lucas
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Given that youth unemployment is today approaching 1 million and that as a Liberal Democrat he touted for votes by offering the abolition of fees and by pursuing the policy of the Labour party, rather than the policy he is now pursuing, does he not think that it is entirely understandable that young people have no faith in politics? Should he not say sorry?
Danny Alexander
No, the hon. Gentleman should say sorry, and of course we are supporting Airbus, in his part of the country, as part of our strategy for creating jobs.
We have only to look across the eurozone to see the costs of political indecision and the price that comes from consolidating at the behest of the market rather than taking charge of one’s own destiny, as the Government have. We have seen the problems in the eurozone and are working to help, but we already have flexibility in our own plan. By taking the tough decisions that we have on fiscal policy, we have provided the space in which the Bank of England can act. In the Governor’s own words,
“monetary policy is the right way to take the strain of changes in the world economy.”
As we have already said, we are considering credit easing options as a way to inject money directly into the business sector. We will provide further details in the autumn statement, and I am grateful for the welcome given to that policy on both sides of the House.
Of course, today’s unemployment figures are a reminder of the difficult task that we face. Unemployment is not merely a statistic; it is a high cost for the individuals and families concerned. It is not a price worth paying, and that is why we will be relentless in our pursuit of growth.
Danny Alexander
I will not. I only have a few minutes left.
We will not return to growth on the back of debt-fuelled consumption.
Danny Alexander
No, I will not.
We will not return to growth on the back of what we might call predatory growth, based on spending money we do not have, so that when the music stops and the bills fall due, they have to be paid for by the rest of us. Instead, we are committed to building a new model of growth powered by investment, exports and enterprise, for example by investing in infrastructure. Over the four years of this spending review period, we will invest more in transport infrastructure than our predecessors managed in the previous four years.
Rachel Reeves
Before the general election, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills said:
“Cuts without economic growth will not deal with the deficit.”
Does the Chief Secretary agree?
Danny Alexander
I do, and I am about to set out exactly what this Government are doing for economic growth, if I can be allowed two or three more minutes to fill in that point.
As I was saying, we are investing in infrastructure. Only two weeks ago, I announced the creation of a new “Growing Places” fund—half a billion pounds that will kick-start developments that are currently stalled, deliver on key infrastructure and create jobs.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) said, we also have to stop the decay in our competitiveness that has marred the past decade. so we are cutting corporation tax to 23% by 2014, taking it to the lowest rate in the G7. We will increase the SME rate of research and development tax credits to 225% by April 2012, and we are tackling the problems of the imbalances in growth between regions, which a number of Members on both sides of the House have raised. That is why today, the Business Secretary announced the first of our new technology and innovation centres that are being established, and why we have committed £1.4 billion to the regional growth fund, which has committed to projects in the north-east, the north-west and across the country.
As the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) rightly observed, we have also announced 22 enterprise zones that will attract hundreds of new start-up enterprises and create thousands of jobs by 2015. We are ensuring, too, that our young people have the skills to seize their opportunities through the recovery. We are supporting more apprenticeships than any previous Government—by the end of this Parliament we will deliver 250,000 more than the previous Government planned, on top of a total of 100,000 work experience placements.
I know that this is a difficult time for many people and families across the country, and that it is not much comfort to say that it would be very much worse if it were not for this Government’s determination to fix the failures of the past.
Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Main Question accordingly put.
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Business of the House (17 October)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
I beg to move,
That, at the sitting on Monday 17 October, notwithstanding Standing Order No. 14(3A) (Arrangement of public business), the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of the proceedings on the Motion in the name of Sir George Young relating to the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund not later than two hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion; and such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved.
I do not want to detain the House any longer than necessary on this issue. The motion provides for two hours of debate on the Government motion on pensions on Monday. It provides certainty for the House, and it is necessary as the day is being shared with a debate scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee on the Hillsborough disaster. That is the first debate in this Chamber that has resulted from the new e-petition system introduced by the Government.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Would it not be better to protect the Hillsborough debate by stating that there should be a minimum of three hours for it, so that it could go beyond the moment of interruption? Otherwise, if there are statements or urgent questions on Monday, the Hillsborough debate could be squeezed to one and a half hours.
Mr Heath
I have to say that I believe the programme motion does provide the required protection. It is a sensible procedural motion, and it is my great regret that we have to debate it at any length this evening. The mood of the House was apparent last night during the various points of order on this matter. The debate on the Hillsborough disaster was supported by nearly 100 Members of the House when presented to the Backbench Business Committee. It also has the support of more than 139,000 members of the public who signed the e-petition supporting the debate. Members of the House have been liaising with the many hundreds of people who intend to travel to London on Monday to listen to the debate, many of whom will be bereaved families of those who lost their lives in the tragedy.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) asked a question of the Prime Minister earlier today. He said:
“Does he understand that the perception out there in the real world is that some MPs would rather talk about their own pensions than discuss a 22-year-old injustice and the deaths of 96 men, women and children?”
I have to say that if the House were unable to agree to this motion this evening, that is exactly the impression that would be given. I want to avoid that, which is why I commend the motion to the House.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
I support the Deputy Leader of the House’s comments, and I want to remind the House that it should bear in mind when making its decision on the motion how it will look to the country. Do parliamentarians want to give the impression that they are more interested in their personal financial interests—their pensions, no less—than in the issues that concern the people they represent? Do Members of the House want to be seen to be gazing at their own navel at the expense of doing their proper job, which is to respond to the issues that matter to the people we represent? The Hillsborough disaster is pertinent not only to the people of Liverpool, Sheffield and Nottingham. Those who have signed the petition want justice for the 96 who died and for their families, and in that sense it is relevant to every Member of the House. I urge colleagues to support the motion tabled in the name of the Leader of the House.
Question put and agreed to.
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The House divided: - Ayes: 309 / Noes: 20 - Question accordingly agreed to.
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Ovarian Cancer
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. It has been a good many years since I last did so, when I was chairman of the Welsh Young Conservatives and you were chairman of the national Young Conservatives. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this important subject. I am conscious that many hon. Members wish to contribute, many of whom have personal and constituency experience of the disease. It is important to hear from as many of them as possible, so I shall make my opening comments as brief as I can.
My personal experience of the effects of ovarian cancer occurred some 40 years ago, and it meant that I never knew my grandmother. In her 50s, she suffered from the disease, which sadly took her life in my first year of life. She was buried on my first birthday. Clearly, at that age I was too young to know, but she was, by all accounts, a truly wonderful lady and, due to the cruel nature of the disease, her death was a loss that impacted on my family for many years.
Some 40 years on, I was elected a Member of Parliament in 2010, and like all new MPs, I am sure, I felt somewhat overwhelmed when I came to this place. What staggered me more than anything was the volume of invitations that I received from many different charities. One stood out—that from Target Ovarian Cancer. It stood out because it informed me that a constituent would be attending a reception, and because of the impact that the disease had had on my family.
I worked in the charity sector for 16 years and, as I was involved in politics, I thought I knew how to get to Members of Parliament, but I realised how wrong I was when I saw the volume of correspondence that I received. I thought it clever of Target Ovarian Cancer to make its invitation personal by bringing a constituent down here. In June, I attended that reception and had the opportunity to meet my constituent, Chris Shagouri. She is one of those people with whom one instantly clicks; she is inspirational. I listened to her speak about how late diagnosis of the cancer had impacted on her, her husband and her family. She talked about her ongoing battle to keep the disease at bay, and it is clear that she has great determination, but it was easy to wonder how much easier it might have been had the diagnosis been made earlier.
As the reception continued, I heard, time and again, moving stories from other women about their experiences. That and Chris’s persuasive manner convinced me to support the all-party group on ovarian cancer, which was being set up.
Sadly, diary clashes have restricted the number of meetings that I have been able to attend, but it is impressive that they are regularly attended by women who reinforce over and again the message that early diagnosis is necessary. At the most recent meeting, we heard again from women from throughout the UK about their experiences. At the most recent reception, four women gave personal accounts of their problems, which motivated me to bid for this debate. I am grateful to have been given that opportunity.
Ovarian cancer is not rare. It is the fourth most common cause of cancer death in women after breast, lung and bowel cancers. Every year, some 6,500 women are diagnosed and, staggeringly, 4,400 die every year. Just 36% of women who are diagnosed survive for a further five years. Those figures are staggering, compared with more than 80% for those who suffer breast cancer. It is also staggering that in three quarters of women who are diagnosed, the cancer has already started to spread. Those figures are scary.
The holding of this debate prompted someone to contact me this week. They wrote:
“My mother died aged 67 in 2009 with Ovarian Cancer. By the time she was diagnosed, the cancer wasn’t in the early stages and she was given only a 2% chance of living for 5 years. She fought all the way with various treatments and lived for 7 years after diagnosis.”
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising the issue. As he rightly said, every one of us can relate to a constituent or family member with the disease, and most people are aware that the cancer is hereditary or genetic. Does he believe that whenever someone is diagnosed with ovarian cancer there should be immediate checks on other family members—sisters, nieces, and daughters—to ensure that the hereditary effect is not passed on? Does he believe that that should be done quickly after diagnosis?
Stuart Andrew
I am grateful for that intervention. I agree absolutely that anything we can do to ensure early diagnosis of conditions can only help. In the long term, it is better for the individual concerned, and certainly better for the rest of the family, who go through equal concern.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Not long ago in my constituency, we ran an event to raise money for ovarian cancer treatment. An astounding finding was the number of young women aged 18 to 25 who are affected. I was astonished, because my impression had been that the disease affected older women, but it seems to be on the rise among younger women and is known as the silent killer. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that early intervention is vital? That could be done with blood tests, which some GPs have called for, and perhaps in schools, to identify this tragic killer of women.
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I will talk about early diagnosis, which is crucial, as is awareness—making people aware of the symptoms. That is crucial in the campaign to fight this terrible disease.
I return to the letter that I was quoting from, which is relevant to the point that the hon. Gentleman made:
“I really hope the message regarding this disease can increase, as I wouldn’t want anyone else to suffer as my mother did. If she had gone to her GP straight away when she presented with symptoms and the GP acted straight away, then she may still be with her family, who miss her so much.”
That is a powerful testament to the problem that the disease causes.
According to figures from the National Cancer Intelligence Network, only pancreatic cancer involves a higher proportion of people diagnosed with the late stage of the disease. but with ovarian cancer, unlike pancreatic cancer, we know what the symptoms are. That was not always the case. The hon. Gentleman referred to it as the silent killer, which is often how it is referred to, but in most cases the symptoms go unrecognised for some time by the women or their GPs. It is alarming that Target Ovarian Cancer has found that one third of women waited six months or more after visiting their GP for a correct diagnosis. That is staggering.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has published guidance on the recognition and initial management of ovarian cancer, and listed symptoms such as persistent bloating or increased abdominal size, abdominal or pelvic pain, difficulty eating and feeling full quickly, and the need to urinate more frequently. If women experience such symptoms frequently, particularly more than 12 times a month, they should undergo tests.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Under NICE guidelines, the first thing that should be done is a CA 125 test. Is the hon. Gentleman concerned that there are apparently restrictions on a GP’s ability to obtain that test for their patients, and importantly that there have been attempts block those tests from being carried through to pathology laboratories? The CA 125 test is the one thing that can spot the disease and increase the possibility of early diagnosis and greater chances of success.
Stuart Andrew
I am grateful for that intervention, which proves the need for the debate. I hope that we can take forward many of the issues raised today to try to tackle the disease. The hon. Gentleman’s point is incredibly valid and important.
NICE’s information is a step forward because it offers women, and importantly GPs, the chance to distinguish between ovarian cancer and more common but less serious conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, which is the most common misdiagnosis. The ovarian cancer awareness measure, which is an accredited tool used by Target Ovarian Cancer in its pathfinder study, showed that only 4% of women felt confident of spotting the symptoms of the disease, and just 9% were aware that persistent bloating is the most common symptom of ovarian cancer. Compare that with 76% of women who recognise that a lump is the most common symptom of breast cancer.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that because of the specificity of the symptoms of ovarian cancer, there is a case for a specific campaign to raise awareness of the disease, rather than relying on a generic campaign, which is the approach that the Government have tended to favour so far?
Stuart Andrew
The hon. Gentleman is in danger of stealing my thunder, but I am glad that he has emphasised my point before I have made it.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this important matter before the House. He is right to highlight awareness, but there is also the need for better information for women and their families following diagnosis. A close relative of mine was diagnosed with the condition, but there was a lack of knowledge of where to find more information about it. That led me and others to look online at a condition that was similar, but had a very different five-year survival rate. That caused a lot of unnecessary anguish to close family members.
Stuart Andrew
My hon. Friend raises a valid point. I worked in the hospice movement for about 15 years, and time and again we heard from parents of children at the hospice or patients in the adult hospice that when they were told of their disease, they almost went blank; they heard not the rest of the information, but just the dreaded diagnosis. It is crucial that people are given as much information as possible to take away and digest later.
As I said, 76% of women recognise the most common symptom of breast cancer, but there is clearly a lack of understanding about the significance of symptoms that they may experience due to ovarian cancer. Furthermore, GPs are not picking up the disease quickly enough. Just 22% of women are urgently referred to the two-week cancer referral route, and the rest are either sent away, or treated or referred inappropriately. Late diagnosis has been identified by the cancer benchmarking study, funded by the Department of Health, as a key driver for the poor ovarian cancer survival rates. That study seeks to understand the differing survival rates between countries for breast, lung, bowel and ovarian cancer. For some reason, despite the findings, ovarian cancer was the only cancer in the study not to be included in subsequent awareness campaigns. A large majority of women who are diagnosed in the later stages of the disease will experience recurrences, and many will develop resistance to chemotherapy.
My constituent, Chris Shagouri, is undergoing treatment yet again to try to slow the progress of the disease. Her strength and commitment to help to improve the lives of women who are diagnosed with ovarian cancer is amazing, especially when she could be forgiven for wanting to concentrate her efforts on herself and her close family. Chris Shagouri is representative of the many women who have attended meetings of the all-party group on ovarian cancer, and who share a determination to change the status quo. They often say that if just one woman gets a quicker diagnosis it will have been worth it, because for that woman this really is a matter of life and death. I hope that we can reach a better total than just one woman.
Treatments for ovarian cancer are highly intensive and invasive. An American study showed that, compared with women who have breast cancer, those with ovarian cancer spend nearly 10 times as long being treated in hospital in the first year after diagnosis and the last year of life. There have been no new life extending treatments for women with ovarian cancer during the past 20 years.
Why do members of the all-party group on ovarian cancer want to have this debate? Because we feel that, right now, an important opportunity to make much needed progress is being overlooked. I welcome the Government’s work, and commend them for it, with the cancer drug fund and the palliative care strategy —it was long overdue. In January, the Government published their new cancer strategy, which contained a strong commitment to improving early diagnosis and a multimillion pound investment in cancer awareness campaigns—fantastic stuff. It initially included regional breast, lung and bowel cancer campaigns, and recently we have heard that a national bowel cancer awareness programme will be rolled out next year, following the success of the pilots. New campaigns on oesophogastric cancers, and kidney or bladder cancer, will be run at a local level. The all-party group remains frustrated that ovarian cancer is not included in that admirable work.
The Government are committed to saving more than 5,000 lives a year from cancer by 2014-15, and women with ovarian cancer could represent 10% of that figure. Each year, up to 500 women lose their lives unnecessarily to ovarian cancer because we do not do as well as other European countries. The Government’s study showed that late diagnosis is a key driver of deaths from ovarian cancer in the UK, and it is curious that the condition was not included in the awareness campaigns in this country.
Why can an awareness campaign on ovarian cancer not be started now, even in pilot form? We applaud the Minister for the commitment to improve people’s chances of surviving cancer, but urge him to include ovarian cancer in the awareness work that is being done. Every day we wait, another one or two women, like my grandmother or such as Chris Shagouri, and many others who have been campaigning will lose their lives unnecessarily. As a matter of urgency, I ask the Minister whether he will consider an awareness campaign and whether he will meet with representatives from the all-party group on ovarian cancer to discuss how we can take such a campaign forward and stop other women suffering in future.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I should start this speech by telling the House that I should be dead, because only two out of every five women with ovarian cancer survive beyond four years and my cancer was diagnosed eight years ago, at the start of 2003. I remember the dates well. Throughout that autumn term, I had been on a very serious diet. As hon. Members know, I need to do that, and I was completely unaware that the loss of appetite that was caused by my cancer was being helpful to my dieting. At the end of that autumn term, I went to see my GP about symptoms that actually were irrelevant to the cancer, but she is a very insightful woman. She took a very careful history from me and did a CA 125 test. This was about December. She referred me and I did the CA 125 test. I remember the dates fairly well because it was just before I went away for a Christmas holiday. The level was elevated. Of course, I had no idea how significant that was. I cannot remember what it was at that point—45 or something like that. I said, “Is that serious?” She said, “Well, yes.” I did not quite work out how serious it was, but she had referred me to a specialist. I came back from my Christmas holiday and had an intravaginal ultrasound in January. I went to see the doctor about the results and was told on, I think, 15 January that I was going to have a hysterectomy in an operation that might be related to cancer on 14 February—not a date one forgets.
Although I was late detecting the symptoms and, indeed, the symptoms that I went to see my GP about were not symptoms caused by my cancer, it was a very short time before I had an intervention. In fact, it was quicker than that. It was this time of day on a Wednesday. The day before, we had lost, by just three votes, a cross-party vote on an 80% elected House of Lords. Those three votes were hon. Gentlemen who had had too good a dinner. I was trying to do press and so on about the House of Lords vote. I was trying to get across the point that a majority of the House of Commons thought that we should have an 80% elected House of Lords, but some hon. Members went in the wrong door because they cannot manage when they do not have Whips telling them where to go. Those calls were interrupted by a telephone call from St Thomas’ hospital, which said, “We have a cancellation. Can you come in today?” I burst into tears. Then I went to the Army & Navy Stores and bought a nightie and a pair of slippers and set off to St Thomas’ hospital.
As can be imagined, I arrived at the hospital not with my head in the place where a cancer patient needs it to be, but still trying to sort everything out, because although I had known that I was to have the operation, it was originally to take place about two weeks after the House of Lords vote that I was working towards. So I arrived all shouty and dictating things, putting out press releases, bellowing into a phone and so on. I was put in my bed and was still shouting down the phone, but then this woman came up to me, took my hand and put it in a bowl. I was on the phone and I said to her, “What are you doing?” She said, “I’m giving you a manicure.” I said, “Why?” She said, “I’m a volunteer. I come into the women’s ward in St Thomas’ hospital on a Wednesday and give women manicures.” I have told the Minister that story because that volunteer helped me through the experience, as I stopped being an MP and started facing being a patient. I strongly urge the Minister to recognise how powerful such roles, which do not look clinically essential, are in the care of people. That is my first message.
My second message is that my story tells us how good the NHS can be—how fast it can respond. In my case, it was eight to 10 weeks between first going to the GP—and not reporting the right symptoms—and having an operation. One cannot ask for better than that. I know that a big reason for it was the targets that we had set, because when I was told when my operation would take place, the consultant said to me, “Oh, I’m bumping up against the date.” I therefore urge the Minister both to look after the role of volunteers and voluntary organisations and to retain those targets that put pressure on the system to help people like me to live.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on initiating this important debate. Does the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) agree that although it is wonderful that she had such rapid access to treatment, such access to diagnosis is not uniformly available throughout the country? My experience is that it is difficult for general practitioners to gain rapid access to ultrasound scans, which was a crucial factor in the hon. Lady’s diagnosis. Equally, access to CA 125 measurements, although included in the NICE draft guidelines, which is welcome, is not uniformly available to GPs throughout the country.
Fiona Mactaggart
The fact that those things are not accessible is condemning women to die. It is very simple, and they are not complicated tests. I have had an awful lot of CA 125 tests because women have a lot before and a lot afterwards to see what is happening to the markers in their blood. It is a very simple test and certainly should be available in primary care so that GPs can do it quickly and reassure themselves and their patients. It was thanks to Ovacome that I began to realise how important knowing one’s CA 125 level is. Until I started reading the educative materials produced by voluntary organisations, I did not know that.
I want to say one thing about all the voluntary help available to people with cancer. It is very confusing. People never really know who does the thing that they need—who provides the help. Today, the question might be, “Should I wear a wig, or are they all horrible and uncomfortable?” The answer is yes, by the way. It might be, “Do I need someone to hold my hand and explain what’s wrong with me?” People do not know these things. I wish that somehow all the wonderful charities could get together and have one doorway through which the patient goes and can say, “This is what my life’s like. I can’t afford to park at the hospital” or “The wig that I got is itching” or “Is my reaction to chemotherapy appropriate? Do other people have it?” Who are the right people to help? People in this situation never know who the right people are, so one thing that I wish the Department of Health would do is find some way of resourcing those organisations to provide a better entry to their services for people with cancer.
However, I want to focus on diagnosis and helping people to detect their symptoms early. I did not detect mine particularly early; indeed, it was my GP who detected them, not me. Many hon. Members have written to the Minister, and at the annual general meeting of the all-party group in July we considered the response that he had sent us. Frankly, to me, it seems that the message is not getting through. The work being done to improve early diagnosis of cancer, particularly awareness, will not make a difference to the women who have ovarian cancer. I am very glad to receive an account of the work being done on breast, lung and bowel cancer, but frankly it is a bit insensitive. Someone who is concerned about ovarian cancer will see all those wonderful information campaigns on other cancers, but none of them applies to the symptoms of ovarian cancer. That will not do, and it particularly will not do when ovarian cancer is such a killer.
In the letter to the all-party group, the Minister said that
“future activity will depend on the success of the Be Clear on Cancer campaigns”.
His Department has since announced that following the success of the regional pilot campaign for bowel cancer, it will be rolled out nationally. Now that we know that those awareness campaigns work, when will we have a commitment to work on ovarian cancer? We have extended the work to include stomach, oesophageal, bladder and kidney cancer. Why not ovarian cancer? It was not until long after I had had a hysterectomy, chemotherapy and so on that I realised which of the symptoms that I had had were clues to my cancer. We really must help people to know that they are at risk. Ovarian cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer death in women. Is it just because it affects women that we are not seeing action? If men had it too, we might be doing better, although, of course, we have a good history on breast cancer.
I worry that ovarian cancer is being put in the “too difficult” box, and it is not acceptable to do that with the most fatal gynaecological cancer. Ovarian cancer kills four times as many women as cervical cancer, for which we have a national screening programme. Is it not time that we put in place a national screening programme for ovarian cancer and gave GPs and others proper access to diagnostic tests that will save thousands of women’s lives? It is not acceptable that so many women die of this cancer when we know how to stop it, and I urge the Minister quickly to put in train action to deal with this issue.
Mr Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow such a powerful speech. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew). We have worked together before, and he is getting quite a reputation for calling good debates in this place. I pay tribute to him for bringing this issue before us.
Like my hon. Friend, I come to the House with many experiences, which have shaped my life thus far. Cancer—not just ovarian cancer—has touched my life many times, and I have fought it many times. So far, it has won more times than I have, and such experiences shape the work that I do in the House.
In the next few minutes, I will not rehearse the arguments we have heard or repeat the statistics that my hon. Friend set out, but I will reinforce some of the things that have been said. Clearly, the most effective way of promoting awareness and understanding of the symptoms of ovarian cancer is to raise its public profile, and I hope that this debate will, if nothing else, go some way towards doing that.
I am a member of the all-party group and I pay great tribute to Target Ovarian Cancer and cancer charities generally, which do such an excellent job on this issue. I, too, have been struck by how effective they are as a lobby and by how powerful they are; the fact that so many Members are here today and that so many are interested in this issue is testament to that.
I thought that I would give Members a few reflections on my role as co-chair of the all-party group on breast cancer. I hope that is not insensitive; it is meant to be helpful, because there are really powerful lessons to be learned from the fight against breast cancer, and I hope that they can help women with ovarian cancer.
Thirty years ago, the breast cancer survival rate in this country was barely 50%; today, it is more than 80%. My goodness, that is testament to the effort that has been made. There have been many debates in the House, which have played a tiny role. There has also been funding, and large amounts of research and expertise have been applied to the issue. Awareness, too, has been critical. Similarly, there have been new treatments and a screening programme. All those things have made a difference, and they have all been essential to the significant progress we have achieved.
What has been key, however, has been the number of women who have been prepared to stand up and put their personal experiences on the record to keep breast cancer high on the nation’s agenda. Obviously, there have also been some high-profile deaths. There are so many to list, but what struck me, and it is often quoted, was when Linda McCartney lost her fight against the disease. So many women had grown up with the McCartneys, and her death did so much to place breast cancer on the agenda.
Breast cancer ambassadors continue to play a crucial role in raising awareness by sharing their personal experiences and promoting cancer campaigns in their local areas, as well as nationally, through the national media and through this place. That really brings home issues of which people might otherwise have remained unaware. It was not always the case that women immediately thought a lump might mean breast cancer; that was due to a huge amount of hard work and a huge number of awareness campaigns. The ambassadors really filled the gap effectively, and I hope we can see more of that in the fight against ovarian cancer.
As a member of the all-party group on ovarian cancer, I know that some representatives of the charities might be thinking that the lack of survivors makes fighting this disease more difficult, but that is a reason to try harder, not to give up. The lack of survivors means that people such as the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and other Members who take part in debates such as this are more important than ever in raising the issue and in keeping it high on the political agenda, and we will raise it again and again.
The high number of fundraising and public awareness drives promoted by the Department that the Minister represents, as well as politicians’ willingness seriously to grapple with the issue, have meant that the fight against breast cancer has retained its high profile, to the benefit of tens of thousands of women and their friends and families. Governments have produced very effective awareness campaigns over the years to encourage women regularly to check themselves and to ensure they know what they are looking for. The TLC—touch, look, check—campaign by Breakthrough Breast Cancer, which Target Ovarian Cancer works closely with, has been incredibly effective, and TLC day is part of breast cancer awareness month, which is this month. That is another exceptionally powerful way of reminding the public of that issue and of raising awareness of the fight against breast cancer.
Such simple messages, which can be spread through the champions I mentioned, can be used successfully and powerfully in the fight against ovarian cancer. We can send a bold message that women can fight the disease and beat it, and the hon. Member for Slough is wonderful living proof of that.
Many large national studies with large research grants were carried out in years gone by in the fight against breast cancer, and we need greater commitment and funding for research grants from the Government and charitable bodies at national level in fighting ovarian cancer. By demonstrating the commitment that exists in the research community to provide the wherewithal for large studies, huge strides can be made in bringing ovarian cancer to political and public attention. Perhaps the Minister can shed some light on his Department’s proposals on the future funding and commissioning of studies on the disease. Any information that he can share with us would be much appreciated.
Notwithstanding the connection between the familial forms of breast and ovarian cancer, which share the same defective genes to some extent, the age profile of the women affected is broadly similar, although, as the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) rightly said, a striking number of younger women are affected by ovarian cancer. In that respect, I received the briefing from the Teenage Cancer Trust, which was very powerful.
It is not inconceivable that the same women who take on board the messaging about breast cancer symptoms will be open to messaging about ovarian cancer. We are always told, so it must be true, that women are much more receptive to health messages than men. That is absolutely right, so we have an important opportunity to make significant and potentially life-saving progress.
Obviously, there are still huge improvements to make in the fight against breast cancer, and that is even truer of the fight against ovarian cancer—particularly in terms of diagnosis and treatment. Like other Members, I urge the Minister to take action on ovarian cancer awareness as soon as possible. Currently, we are barely getting past first base. This is a silent killer, but it is also a silent national scandal. If we achieved what has been achieved in the fight against breast cancer in the past couple of decades through raising awareness, screening and better treatments, 3,000 of the 4,000 deaths a year from ovarian cancer might not occur. That might have saved the grandmother of my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey, and it might have saved mine.
I ask the Minister please to ensure that the Government take swift action and make a start on dealing with this issue. At the moment, there is little DOH-led activity to improve awareness of symptoms among women and GPs, despite the fact that the Government have rightly committed themselves to saving the lives of 5,000 cancer sufferers a year as part of their excellent cancer strategy. I have worked closely with the Minister on the Health and Social Care Bill, and he knows that I am a huge supporter of that cancer strategy. With investment of £12 million in awareness work towards achieving that pledge, some might describe tackling ovarian cancer as low-hanging fruit.
The Minister said earlier in the year that the main focus for the Government’s national symptoms awareness campaign would be bowel cancer, but he also stated that new campaigns were being piloted on other cancers and their symptoms. I hope that he will update hon. Members on the progress that his Department has made in piloting the campaigns. Including ovarian cancer in the awareness budget will help the Government to meet their targets—I am sure of that—while enabling them to improve survival rates for those with ovarian cancer, which are among the worst in Europe at the moment. If they improve, the lives of many women can be saved.
Target Ovarian Cancer gave me an excellent booklet, “An MP’s guide to ovarian cancer”, shortly after I was elected, and it contains a lovely quotation from a lady whom I met at an ovarian cancer reception last year. Her name is Eilish Colclough—I always get it wrong when I attempt it—and she is a mother of five. We have seen her speak before, and she is fighting terminal ovarian cancer. She says:
“I look at myself as living not dying.”
Whenever she speaks, and whenever such patients, survivors, fighters and livers come to speak to the all-party groups that I am involved in, it is always infinitely more powerful than any Member or Minister. In my experience—and I have had a lot of it, as I have said—people with cancer are not just their cancer; they are everything else as well. I hope that we can find many more people such as Eilish—survivors—to give more proof of that, to help us fight ovarian cancer, and to drive down the number of women we lose to it.
Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)
Order. We have 30 minutes left for general debate, so I ask hon. Members to limit their remarks to no more than five minutes.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on securing this important debate, which I hope will be a springboard for increasing awareness and for encouraging the Department to pick up the gauntlet set before it today.
In the next 12 months, between 11 and 15 women in my constituency will die because of ovarian cancer. That is not a high or low figure; it is the average across the United Kingdom. We must wake up to the reality and that figure must be checked. We must embark seriously on a national campaign that will achieve better survival results, as has happened with major cancers such as breast and lung cancer.
I want to put four important and sobering statistics before the House. Most of the women who are diagnosed—75%—have late-stage disease, when survival rates are very poor. That is a very high figure. Also, 30% of women are diagnosed following admission to their local accident and emergency ward, not by their GP. Women with ovarian cancer are five times more likely to die within a month of diagnosis than women with breast cancer, and the UK’s late diagnosis is thought to be the key driver for those survival rates. Only 4% of women are confident that they can spot the symptoms of ovarian cancer.
I have two questions for the Minister. First, why, as the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr Brine) said, is there not yet any Department of Health-led activity to improve awareness of symptoms? That is the key to addressing the issue. Secondly, I take the view that what is not measured is not done, so why is there no national measurement for ovarian cancer?
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Does my hon. Friend agree that greater awareness and early detection were the key to the significant progress made with other cancers? Many charities became involved with departmental officials to ensure that those things became the driver, which led to reductions in numbers. That is the key for ovarian cancer as well.
Ian Paisley
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point incredibly well. We have all come to realise that there is a lack of awareness because of lobby groups, patients in our constituencies and the families who come to see us saying, “Why did we not know? If we had known, we would have done something else and gone to the GP earlier.”
As I have said, a gauntlet has been thrown down to the Department. Let us have better national measurement of outcomes established and followed up—year in, year out—so that the disease, which has been described as a silent killer, can be properly tackled and we can achieve the same successes as we have with breast, lung and bowel cancer survival rates.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on securing the debate. I want to focus on a small area of it, but first I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who gave us a very personal story and identified a key problem—the complexity of the symptoms, the fact that they are sometimes confusing and the general lack of awareness of what they are.
I thank Target Ovarian Cancer for its approach to me, which was quite personal. It was one of those approaches, which I sometimes receive, that make me think, “Ouch!” It would have been great if I had been approached by the Teenage Cancer Trust to be asked to emphasise the number of very young women who suffer, but, unfortunately, as I am approaching a large birthday, Target decided that I was in the key target group of women who really should know more. That is a key point. When I added in some other risk factors, such as lifestyle and weight, I began to scratch my head and think that perhaps I should take it all very seriously and think more closely about the symptoms that present when someone is suffering from ovarian cancer.
Despite the fact that women tend to be more aware of symptoms and keener than men to go to the GP—I apologise, as there are many male MPs present in the Chamber—they also have a serious tendency to grin and bear it, and get on with things. Sadly, symptoms such as bloating are not uncommon. I see the hon. Member for Slough nodding in agreement.
We are missing an opportunity, because by the time women get to a significant birthday they are already well used to some forms of screening for cancer. Great, next year I get mammograms as well—fantastic. That is an opportunity to talk to women about the symptoms of ovarian cancer. I do not want to appear controversial or to denigrate the idea that we need a general awareness campaign, which is important, but as any good advertising company will explain, a targeted message to the audience likely to be most affected is the best way to get something across.
I suggest to the Minister that we need to look at ways to approach the women most likely to be affected. That is not in any way intended to undermine the work of the Teenage Cancer Trust. The incidence in younger women is important and alarming, but age, genetics and hereditary disposition are the largest contributory factors in ovarian cancer, and we need to give close attention to the idea that when women are called for routine cervical smear tests or mammograms they are in exactly the right caring, knowledgeable environment for explaining the symptoms. I hope that the message will get out a little more effectively to those women who are at risk and who could contribute significantly to the Government target on reducing deaths from cancer.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on securing today’s debate. It is good to follow hon. Members who have made powerful and reflective comments.
Like other hon. Members, I have a personal interest in the issue. My mam died from ovarian cancer when she was aged just 42, in our hometown of Tredegar in Blaenau Gwent—too, too young. My two sisters were just teenagers. I want women in my constituency and across the UK to have the best possible treatment if they have ovarian cancer today, or the earliest possible diagnosis if they get it in future.
A comprehensive report on cancer in Wales is published every three years. The latest was published just last month, and there are good stats on Wales that are important. The report covers nearly 15 years from 1995 to 2009, and, as the hon. Member for Pudsey said, it notes that ovarian cancer is the fourth most common cancer in females. We have to shout that out loudly across the UK from here today and hope that it is picked up in other places—it is a powerful statistic.
As in the rest of the UK, there has been a slight decrease in incidence over time, but of the countries studied, most of which are European, Wales is top of the incidence table. Wales has an incidence rate of 18.8 per 100,000 of population, which is significantly above the UK average. I know that Wales has a larger older population than other parts of the UK, which leads to higher levels of cancer, but the particular worry about ovarian cancer is that women seek medical help only at a relatively late stage, so the survival rate is poorer than for other gynaecological cancers. The “Cancer in Wales” report notes:
“There is no clear link with incidence and degree of deprivation”
but there
“seems to be a slight trend towards increased survival in patients with lower levels of deprivation.”
The mean age of diagnosis in Wales is 65.1.
What has particularly struck me—this has come out in today’s discussion—is that women who often take responsibility for the health care of their families, particularly children, and visit the family GP do not themselves recognise the symptoms of the cancer. In Wales, 29% of the public said that they were not at all confident, and a further 29% were not very confident, in identifying the symptoms. Together, that makes a high 58%. As others have said, only 2% were confident in recognising the symptoms. Public Health Wales is running important public education campaigns on skin, bowel and mouth cancer, but not, to my knowledge, on ovarian cancer. It is important, again as others have said, that we have a wide public health campaign on the issue.
I have long experience of working in the voluntary sector, most recently for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and, before that, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. I know that the sector is fertile ground for innovation. For example, I understand that some charities in the sector have developed training programmes for women and GPs, including an online symptoms tracker called Ovacome. That will be a good initiative. Such programmes are excellent and clearly show commitment to provide early diagnosis. However, like others, I ask the Minister to give assurances that the Government will look into providing a nationwide campaign to help women to identify symptoms of the cancer and build on the important work that is taking place with other charities.
I note that there are two screening trials under way—one for women in the general population, the other for women with a strong family history in this regard, such as my two sisters. I hope that the evidence from those trials will support a national screening programme. As we know, if ovarian cancer can be caught in its earliest stages, survival rates can be above 70%, which is a strong stat. We could save the lives of hundreds of women in the UK and save their families from the pain of a premature and preventable death.
Where they live also impacts on the support received by women with ovarian cancer. The Minister will be aware of the significant impact of the clinical nurse specialists and what they can do to support women with ovarian cancer, yet the 2009 Target Ovarian Cancer pathfinder study showed that many clinical nurse specialist posts were under threat, with a lack of cover for sickness and leave, and with a heavy work load. Many women cited the clinical nurse specialist as the single most helpful point of contact throughout their cancer journey, yet in large parts of the country the nurses are sole operators, as it has been phrased. Certainly in Wales, we have experienced difficulty in providing such posts. Elsewhere, I hear of posts being frozen and sometimes not filled.
Finally, while ovarian cancer is noted with respect to the lack of available and new drugs, a couple can be accessed via the cancer drugs fund, but again, where someone lives determines whether they get access. I hope that the Minister will give us the assurance that, no matter where a woman lives, she will receive early diagnosis and access to the high-quality treatment she needs. I hope that I have emphasised the importance of increased care and support for the large number of women with that terrible condition, which is often fatal, but, if caught early, survivable.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for securing the debate and to all other colleagues who have contributed. In my patch, in the southern end of Cumbria, we have run awareness campaigns locally with our general practitioners on the symptoms of ovarian cancer. Most people here have had a tale to tell about how ovarian cancer has touched them, and my motivation is very personal: my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in October 2002 and passed away in July 2004. She was one of the 75% of women who are diagnosed at stage 3 or 4. It is depressing that things have not progressed even since then. I go back to the cancer strategy and the Government’s announcement in January, with clear awareness and honesty that we are behind in survival rates for all sorts of cancers and that lack of awareness and lack of early diagnosis is the common theme in the failure to reach targets and save lives.
With regard to lack of awareness and lack of early diagnosis, ovarian cancer comes top of a pretty grisly league. It is brilliant that breast, lung and bowel cancer were included in the awareness programme, but I was dismayed, as I am sure many others were, to see that ovarian cancer was not. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr Brine) used the phrase, “low-hanging fruit”. If we look at the cold stats on how we can save lives in big numbers pretty quickly, ovarian cancer is potentially the low-hanging fruit.
I will repeat quickly some of the stats already used: 500 women die unnecessarily every year from the disease; a third of cases take longer than six months to be diagnosed; and 29% are diagnosed at A and E, which shows a complete failure of the pathway. It is the fourth biggest killer of women in terms of cancer. Although I am hugely grateful for the stuff from Target Ovarian Cancer and other ovarian cancer organisations, I repeat those stats because my mum found them on the web nearly 10 years ago—and they have not got any flaming better! It is utterly depressing that the statistics have not improved in that time.
As the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) rightly pointed out, survival rates are very bad, given what they could be. If women are diagnosed early, ovarian cancer is relatively easy to cure, with a 70% survival rate. Things are so bad that, by investing now, a huge difference will be made, and we will see lives saved in big numbers in no time.
As is the case for all people in such circumstances, my mum’s ovarian cancer was an appalling family tragedy, which, in many ways, brought us together. She had 20 or 21 months of extremely high-quality life following her diagnosis, and I pay huge tribute to the Macmillan nurses and to Rosemere trust at Preston hospital, who made her life bearable—indeed, made all our lives bearable, and sometimes even a joy. My mum was aware that there was a genetic potential, and her concern was for my sister, my sister’s kids and my kids. I would put a plea in, with the other pleas that I will make in a moment on behalf of all of us, for effort to be put into looking at diagnosis and at the potential for genetically tracking the disease early, before it even arises.
Our collective plea—I do not see any dissent here—is for the Department of Health to act quickly to make the issue a priority and for the Minister to meet Target Ovarian Cancer, the other ovarian cancer charities and members of the all-party group to discuss a practical strategy and to invest now in a targeted awareness campaign, without waiting for the results of the diagnostic test and the trial, which I think will arrive in 2015. Two thousand more women will die unnecessarily if we sit around and wait for that. We need action now, and I would like the Minister to undertake to do just that.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on securing this important debate. I am sure that other hon. Members will not mind if I also single out my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who gave such a personal and passionate speech about how ovarian cancer has affected her. Like so many others here, my family has been affected by the disease. My first cousin, Mary, died in her 30s from ovarian cancer, leaving behind a young son. I am sure that all of us here are aware of the impact of this terrible disease.
The recently published report “Cancer in Wales: 1995-2009”, which my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) mentioned, highlights the fact that, on average, 394 women a year have been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in Wales over that period. The average number of mortalities due to ovarian cancer between those years was 237, which translates into 60.3% of those diagnosed with the disease ending up dying from it. Such startling statistics demonstrate what all hon. Members have been saying about the lack of awareness of the symptoms of this disease.
If ovarian cancer mortality rates in this country were the same as those in other EU countries, we could save 500 lives a year. That statistic on its own should make us all sit up and take notice and realise that, over many years, not enough has been done to highlight this terrible disease.
We have debated the kind of awareness campaign that needs to be run. A generic campaign is clearly not adequate in this case. There needs to be a specific campaign around ovarian cancer. As other hon. Members have said, only 3% of women recognise that increased abdominal size is potentially a serious symptom of ovarian cancer. That compares with three-quarters of women who know that a lump in their breast is potentially a serious symptom of cancer. If educating the public about the symptoms of this disease is important, of equal importance is the need for GPs to consider ovarian cancer as a possibility when patients display the symptoms.
It has been mentioned already that nearly a third of women who are diagnosed are diagnosed following an admission into accident and emergency, which also tells us that there is a serious problem.
My constituent Hazel Burrows contacted me via her granddaughter earlier this year. In her e-mail, Georgette Burrows said:
“Everywhere you look, whether it’s when you're watching your favourite soap opera or doing your weekly shop, there are campaigns for breast cancer, and rightly so. Although I do believe more needs to be done in order to make women aware of ovarian cancer.”
She is right and today’s debate has demonstrated that very clearly.
I will work with my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent in relation to Wales and with Mark Drakeford in the Welsh Assembly on this matter. Let me say to the Minister that all of us come into politics because, whatever our views, we believe in the possibility of changing things for the better. If today’s debate has highlighted anything it is that that is possible and that we can save people’s lives. Being able to achieve that rests partly with the Minister who is in his seat today.
As all former Ministers know—I include my hon. Friend the Member for Slough—we go on in a job for some time, getting our submissions from officials, turning up at Adjournment debates, reading out the speech that has been provided and then carrying on as before. The Minister cannot do that after today’s debate. He must go back and say to his officials, “I want fresh on my desk, as soon as possible, a new strategy for raising awareness around ovarian cancer because what we have now is not good enough.” He has that opportunity to make a difference. It is a great privilege to be a Minister—I told myself that every day I walked into my ministerial office. The Minister has a chance to save people’s lives and I hope that he takes that opportunity.
Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on securing today’s debate.
Before the general election, I met a gentleman called Eddie O’Hara, who lives in East Kilbride, which is part of my constituency—at least it is until midday today. Eddie’s wife, Linda, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer on Good Friday 2000. Like so many women, the diagnosis came far too late. I did not have the good fortune to meet her, but by all accounts she was a truly gifted and inspirational woman. It was in her memory that Eddie O’Hara set up the charity, Ovarian Lets Shout For Linda, to raise awareness of the symptoms and to support all those affected by that terrible disease. I cannot help but feel that those groups that have been set up to highlight the disease are filling a gap that should really be filled by our national health service.
Like the hon. Member for Pudsey, when I was elected to Parliament last year, I had to go through a Kilimanjaro-esque mountain of mail. Underneath the big pile, I found an invitation to a Target Ovarian Cancer event. I signed up and learned much more about the killer disease. People gave all sorts of statistics and views, but the big one that got me was that 75% of women are diagnosed too late. Surely that is the saddest indictment of our health service. Much more needs to be done and, as hon. Members have outlined, there are different ways in which things can be done.
Let me give a practical example of why we should do more. I met Eilish Colclough—hopefully I have pronounced her name correctly—at the Target Ovarian Cancer event last year. I do not know whether she will thank me for saying this but she is a 42-year-old mother of five. In case she is listening to this debate, I hasten to add that she looks much younger. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was 39. She had all the symptoms but her GP dismissed her fears of cancer.
After the TOC event, Eilish and her friends joined me and some other colleagues on the Terrace because she did not want to be in the company of the doctors. She preferred to speak to people who were chatting about things other than the disease. She explained in stark terms that she did not know how long she would live. She is still here, and the world is a better place with Eilish among us. She is a tireless campaigner. She brought to mind that wonderful quote of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said:
“For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.”
As all the statistics have already been mentioned, let me ask the Minister what he is going to do to heighten awareness and improve treatment so that women across the United Kingdom do not have to suffer the anguish that Linda did or the anguish that Eilish endures today.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Let me start by congratulating the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on securing this important and well-attended debate. Every Member who spoke made an effective and moving speech. However, the speech that stands out for me is that of my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). We have already heard that ovarian cancer is a very serious condition and that it is the fifth most common cancer among UK women. Members have also set out the relatively low survival rates for ovarian cancer—they are around 40% compared with 79% for breast cancer. That is largely due to the fact that three out of four women are diagnosed late, once the cancer has spread. It is worth repeating that survival rates could be as high as 90% if the cancer were diagnosed at an early stage. In Hackney, in east London, the five-year ovarian cancer survival rate is only 35%, which is significantly below average.
Despite the evidence relating to lack of awareness, the rates of late diagnosis and the delays in diagnosis admissions by A & E, there is still no Department of Health-led activity to improve awareness of symptoms among women and GPs. That is despite the Government’s commitment to save 5,000 lives a year from cancer by 2014. I welcome the new National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidance on symptoms and the increased access to diagnostics that was announced in the cancer strategy, which mean that there will be new opportunities to improve early diagnosis. But unless women know when to visit their GP, unless the symptoms of ovarian cancer become as well known among ordinary women as the symptoms of breast cancer are and unless GPs know how to consider ovarian cancer, rates of late diagnosis and delays will not improve.
We have already heard, but it is worth repeating, that there is no national outcome measure for ovarian cancer; there are only such measures for breast, lung and bowel cancer. That is already impacting on the ability of PCTs and cancer networks to undertake awareness work about ovarian cancer, as funding for awareness work is being channelled to breast, lung and bowel cancer. That will potentially lead to a worsening of the situation, because it means in practice that there will be a decline in activity.
The quality standard for ovarian cancer will be one of the first of the new suite of quality standards to be introduced by NICE to inform local commissioners, but as yet it is not clear how the standard can be used effectively. Can the Minister tell us whether the Department of Health is considering introducing a national outcome measure for ovarian cancer? Can he also say how the Department will ensure that the quality standard is used effectively?
The Minister will be aware that the first findings of the international cancer benchmarking study—a study led by the Department of Health—showed that in the UK late diagnosis is thought to be a key driver of survival rates, which are poor compared to those in other countries in the study. However, ovarian cancer is the only cancer type in the study not to have had remedial action taken to improve awareness.
The Minister will forgive me when I say that under the last Government we saw substantial investment in cancer services and consequently outcomes improved; for instance, the survival rate for breast cancer rose from 50% to more than 80%. In the case of ovarian cancer, although the figures are not necessarily much better than they were when the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) faced the issues in relation to his mother, the survival rate has in fact doubled in the past 30 years. The commitment shown by the last Labour Government meant that in excess of 1,000 more women per year in England and Wales are now surviving ovarian cancer. However, the UK survival rate for ovarian cancer is still among the lowest in Europe, at 36%. If we achieve the average European survival rate, we will save 500 lives per year.
All of us, including the Minister, know that two major trials are currently taking place: the first is for women in the general population; and the second is for women with a strong family history of ovarian cancer. The former trial will report in 2015 and the latter trial in 2012. However, it is not at all certain that the findings of those trials will result in a national screening programme. Perhaps the Minister can tell the House what the Government’s position is on that issue.
Cancer Research UK tells me that it is concerned that the Health and Social Care Bill, which is currently being debated in another place, risks fragmenting responsibility for the early diagnosis of cancer between Public Health England, local authorities and the NHS. Cancer Research UK’s proposal for guarding against fragmentation is that local authorities and clinical commissioning groups should be jointly incentivised to prioritise early diagnosis, including shared indicators in the public health and NHS outcomes frameworks. That process should be supported by shared budgets, to ensure joint responsibility for delivering improvements in awareness and early diagnosis of cancer. In other words, Cancer Research UK is concerned that policies and responsibilities around early diagnosis will fall through the cracks. How will the Minister respond to that proposal by Cancer Research UK?
The Minister will be aware that, earlier this year, at the 12th international forum of the Helene Harris Memorial Trust, which was originated and facilitated by Ovarian Cancer Action, 50 of the world’s leading researchers and clinicians in ovarian cancer came together to discuss the future for ovarian cancer research. Out of those discussions came nine key actions: improving recognition that “ovarian cancer” is a general term; better targeting of clinical trials; identifying patients at increased genetic risk; developing new approaches to identify targets for treatment; ensuring that both the tumour and the tumour micro-environment are treated; better understanding of relapses of treatment-resistant ovarian cancer; setting up international collaboration to enable tissue samples to be shared and analysed in research; developing better experimental models; and ensuring that clinical trials include measures of quality of life and symptom benefit. Ovarian Cancer Action believes that those nine actions would not only help to improve the quality of life and ovarian cancer survival rates for women in the UK, but help to position the UK as an international leader in the fight against this deadly disease. Is the Minister aware of those recommendations and what is his response to them?
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) made the point that, in the sometimes humdrum routine of the life of a junior Minister, there is occasionally a genuine opportunity to make a difference. Having listened to the informed, personal and passionate contributions of colleagues and other hon. Members this morning, I hope that the Minister will go away from this debate determined to move ahead—on the very strong basis of what the last Labour Government did and what his Government have done up to now—and actually make a difference in relation to ovarian cancer.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)
Thank you very much, Mr Rosindell, for calling me to speak.
I assure the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) that I have not found my last 12 months “humdrum” at all and I agree entirely with the comment by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) that being a Minister is a privilege, and a privilege that one should use fully to serve the common good and the purposes that our constituents send us here for.
I want to try to do justice to the debate, and if I do not cover any issues that have been raised, that will purely be because of time and I will write to hon. Members about those issues. However, I will try to cover as much ground as I can.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on securing the debate and congratulate all those who have taken part. I particularly congratulate the all-party group on ovarian cancer, which has done an excellent job in mobilising colleagues to be here in Westminster Hall today and to be persistent and persuasive in their arguments on the issue.
As others have rightly said, the speech by the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) was typically powerful and typically persuasive. I think that I have served in the House as long as the hon. Lady, and during the time that she fought her cancer I certainly admired the way that she did so, while continuing to provide the service that she gives to her constituents and the House. She made a very powerful set of points today.
I think that everyone who has spoken in the debate has been touched by ovarian cancer. I had not planned to refer to my own experience, but, given that others have talked about their experiences, I will say that my aunt died of ovarian cancer some years ago. Having fought the disease for some time, she sadly died at the Royal Marsden hospital, despite receiving excellent treatment there. Ovarian cancer touches many of us.
I thank Target Ovarian Cancer, Ovarian Cancer Action, Ovacome and the Eve Appeal, which have all done an excellent job in raising MPs’ awareness of ovarian cancer, in the ways that the hon. Member for Pudsey and others have described today. That work has done a lot, not only to initiate debates in this place, but to assist us as MPs to play our part in our communities to help to raise awareness of those issues.
I could rehearse the statistics again, but will not do so because they have already been well rehearsed and powerfully illustrated with personal stories. I certainly recognise the urgency that we need to attach to our fight against cancers and I particularly note the points that have been made today about ovarian cancer. That is why we urgently came forward with the strategy that we published in January and why we have been fast in trialling and rolling out awareness campaigns. I will say more about those awareness campaigns shortly.
As has been pointed out, late diagnosis is one of the main reasons for the relatively poor cancer survival rates in England. I must crave the forgiveness of those colleagues who have spoken today from the perspective of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. They all made important points and they need to continue, as I know they will, to raise them with their colleagues in the devolved Administrations who have responsibility for health.
Research by the National Cancer Intelligence Network showed that nearly a quarter of all cancers are diagnosed through an emergency route, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) said. That is at a stage when the cancer is very advanced. The research also showed that one in five patients did not visit their GP before being diagnosed with cancer. Diagnosis of ovarian cancer often comes late because the symptoms in the early stages—they have been powerfully set out—are often ignored or thought to be something else.
The hon. Member for Slough talked about volunteers, and about the volunteer who did the manicure on that day when her head was in another place. I have visited hospitals where Macmillan Cancer Support and other voluntary organisations play a part. Such volunteers bring back the key human dimension, which the hon. Lady was absolutely right to underline. We will ensure that the role of volunteers in the NHS is valued by including that point in the Department of Health’s message to the NHS in its soon-to-be-published updated volunteer strategy.
Reference has been made to the £450 million for early diagnosis work that the Government have put in as part of the spending review. The funds will support campaigns to raise public awareness of the symptoms of cancers, encouraging people to present with persistent symptoms. They will also support GPs in more effectively assessing people with possible cancer symptoms and improve access to diagnostic tests. In 2010-11, we ran local cancer awareness campaigns and a regional pilot campaign for bowel cancer, and in 2011-12 we are running a national campaign on bowel cancer, a regional campaign on lung cancer and 18 local campaigns to raise awareness of breast cancer among women over 70 and of the symptoms of some less common cancers.
A question that has been rightly put is, why, so far, have we not addressed ourselves to ovarian cancer? Understandably, Members want answers, not least because of the evidence that if we were performing at, I believe, just the average of our European neighbours—certainly if we were matching the best of them—500 additional lives would be saved every year. We are considering whether there is scope for piloting ovarian cancer awareness campaigns, drawing on the experience of our more generic campaigns on blood in urine, which can be a marker for bladder and kidney cancers, and on the evaluations of awareness campaigns on specific disease sites. That will inform us how we can most effectively roll out further campaigns. I give that undertaking, and I am more than happy to meet with members of the all-party group.
The hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) spoke very persuasively about the scope for using existing screening programmes to deliver awareness-raising messages about other cancers, and ovarian cancer in particular, and we will consider how we might implement such a practical solution. Nevertheless, I hope that hon. Members appreciate that awareness raising is just one of a range of actions and that we need to look at the other aspects of the strategy that we set out earlier this year. We are working on other fronts to try to drive up earlier diagnosis and treatment.
A key focus of the cancer outcome strategy is primary care, which is why we are investing in providing GPs with practical tools for assessing patients who might have cancer. In addition, some of the cancer networks are reviewing referral pathways to help to shorten the time taken for patients to access diagnostic tests. I welcome the contribution of the cancer charities that have been working with primary care professionals to promote early diagnosis of cancer, and I specifically pay tribute to Target Ovarian Cancer, which, in partnership with BMJ Learning, has produced an online GP learning tool that covers the signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer, and diagnostic tests based on the latest evidence.
Paul Burstow
I want to try to do justice to the debate and ensure that I get to answer a couple more of the questions posed, but I will give way in a moment if I can.
If a GP suspects cancer, it is vital that they can refer people urgently for further tests, using the two-week referral pathway. For women who do not meet the criteria for that pathway for suspected cancer but have symptoms that require investigation, we are providing additional funds over the next four years to support the diagnosis of ovarian cancer by giving GPs direct access to four key diagnostic tests, including non-obstetric ultrasound. Questions have been asked about what data are collected. We plan routinely to collect data on GP usage of the four tests and to publish them alongside data on GP usage of the two-week referral pathway, so that we can benchmark performance and expose areas that are not performing as well as others.
Several hon. Members asked about the CA 125 test and suggested that there are restrictions. I can assure Members that if there were restrictions we would challenge them. Just last month, Bruce Keogh, NHS medical director, wrote to strategic health authorities to raise questions about general access to diagnostics, and David Flory, deputy NHS chief executive, reiterated in the September edition of The Quarter that there must be no “arbitrary restrictions on access”. That would apply to the CA 125 test, not least because it is clearly covered in NICE guidance.
Hon. Members referred to the two ongoing trials, which are evidence of the research taking place. The UK collaborative trial of ovarian cancer screening offers real prospects for a screening tool, but on screening the Government of the day take the advice of the UK National Screening Committee, which considers the evidence from trials of the sort going on at the moment. A randomised control trial of 200,000 post-menopausal women aged between 50 and 74 is studying the use of annual CA 125 blood tests as a way to identify—along with annual trans-vaginal ultrasound—which women are most at risk of ovarian cancer. The results of the study will be available in 2015, and the Government will then respond to the recommendations that the UK National Screening Committee makes on the basis of the evidence. I hope that there will be a positive recommendation that enables us to roll out such a screening programme.
Familial ovarian cancer screening was referred to early in the debate, and a study has shown that up to 10% of ovarian cancers can be attributed to an inherited genetic predisposition. It was mentioned that the results of that research would be available in 2012, but we understand that the study will close in 2013. We would want to act on the evidence from that study.
Research, therefore, is taking place in those two fields. High-quality applications are the key to getting research funding; we do not fund solely on the basis of something being a priority. The hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington asked about Ovarian Cancer Action’s nine recommendations, and I will respond to her in writing, with copies to colleagues.
National measurement was mentioned. The NHS operating framework for England for 2011-12 requires that cancer registries record the stage of cancer, which is a key proxy for predicting outcomes, and publish one-year, as well as five-year, survival rates. We are benchmarking, providing a useful way to see who is performing well and who is not, and, as the hon. Lady mentioned, we are in the international benchmarking partnership with other nations. Would she like to make her intervention in the remaining time?
Paul Burstow
In conclusion, I hope that I have responded positively to the debate. We must make progress on a broad front in this area to improve early diagnosis and get the treatment that people need, so that we can cut the death toll in this country from all cancers. Ovarian cancer is, and will continue to be, a priority for this Government.
Innovation (NHS)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I requested this debate in order to raise important issues about the ongoing review of how the national health service extracts the full potential from innovative, commercially realisable ideas generated by NHS employees and to seek clarification from the Minister about the scope of the Carruthers review of innovation in the NHS announced this July.
I was led to the subject by my involvement with Odstock Medical Ltd in my constituency, a company that has grown from Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust. OML has pioneered a technique called functional electrical stimulation that produces contractions in paralysed muscles by applying small pulses of electrical stimulation. Having experienced it myself, I can attest that it assists walking. OML has developed a range of neuromuscular stimulators to improve the functional ability of people with neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis. The devices have been developed during many years of collaboration among clinical engineers, clinicians and patients at the National Clinical FES Centre at Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust.
Last year, it came to my attention that, because OML is partly owned by the local NHS foundation trust, under EU rules, it cannot be classified as a small or medium-sized enterprise, and therefore cannot access grants and support through normal Department for Business, Innovation and Skills channels. That seems ludicrous. I met the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), who has responsibility for small business, along with Professor Ian Swain from OML. Little progress could be made, although attempts were made to access specific funds and schemes. It is a systemic failing.
Anxious to overcome that barrier and explore other aspects of innovation in the NHS, more recently, I met with Alun Williams, the CEO of NHS Innovations South West, who has an office in my constituency and is here today. Alun is wholly committed to the NHS and is passionate, as am I, about finding ways to develop streams of revenue for the NHS. I thank him for his support and advice as we have discussed the subject in recent months.
My key concern is this: as populations age, as the cost of drugs and treatments rises faster than inflation and as medical science, thankfully, finds ever more treatments for human ailments and medical conditions, the NHS must be more radical in exploiting the bright ideas of its staff to ensure that the commercial potential of those ideas are realised fully by the NHS.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this enormously important debate. I was brought to the subject by NHS Innovations South East. Does he agree that NHS staff can come up with innovations—examples cited to me include improvements in child protection investigations and adolescent mental health programmes—that do not readily or easily translate or crystallise into commercial benefit? Is it therefore not short-sighted for the Government to insist, as I understand they do, that innovation bodies must be totally self-supporting commercially?
John Glen
I certainly contend that there are significant pockets of innovation. The challenge is bringing those ideas to their full commercial potential and getting them into the NHS so that they are cheaper for the user. The adoption and uptake of NHS-grown ideas is not wide or deep enough, few hospitals showcase their ideas and the wider benefits are not really felt across the NHS. Some ideas, when fully exploited, might realise significant streams of revenue, easing the cost pressures that I mentioned.
The review led by Sir Ian Carruthers, announced at the beginning of July by the Department of Health, will seek in its report next month to inform the strategic approach to innovation in the modernised NHS. However, it must not simply set up another framework or broad aspirations; it must deal convincingly with the gritty realities of what is needed to take a proven idea that has been honed, challenged and assessed by the innovation hubs to its full commercially realised potential.
The report must also recognise that, unless a way is found to invest in such ideas, their commercial potential will be exploited by private sector entrepreneurs who can move more rapidly and access finance more quickly. Intellectual property will thus be patented not by individual NHS trusts, as is desirable, but by the private sector, which will then charge the NHS for products and services at rates that the NHS would rather not pay. I urge the Minister to push the boundaries and ensure that we do not risk allowing the ideas of excellent NHS employees to be lost, thus losing the value and savings that could accrue.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that, although it is important for the NHS to realise the commercial value of innovation, it is also fundamental to the improvement of patient care that innovations take hold more rapidly? Did he see this morning’s comments by Professor Williams, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, who warned of a 20-year wait before innovations start saving lives if we base innovation progress on previous experience? He cited reduced deaths from bowel cancer as a result of keyhole surgery, which took years to become widespread practice.
John Glen
I thank my hon. Friend for that extremely helpful intervention. I met Professor Williams last week, and he made that point to me. That is the nub of the matter. If the NHS does not move quickly on such ideas, someone else will, and it will cost more. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The impact on outcomes is negative. We must move matters forward so that the advantages can accrue to the NHS.
It is important to realise that, in the big picture of NHS politics, there is an almost pathological fear of doing anything that could imply the use of the word “cut” or the even more toxic P-word, privatisation. I am not arguing for either, but I am saying that, unless we adopt savvy practices to incubate and develop proven concepts more speedily, I fail to see how the NHS can deal with the increasingly more intense systemic supply and demand pressures that it will face. Efficiency savings and ring-fenced budgets, although welcome, will not be enough to save the NHS and provide the money that it needs to continue in its present form. We need more realism about that and a radical solution that has the potential to create more money.
I recognise that it should not be the NHS’s primary objective to develop income streams from medical devices, new treatments or services. Equally, given that great ideas are an unintended by-product of taxpayer investment in providing a world-class national health service, it would surely be wrong not to look hard at making innovation work to the NHS’s advantage. So many ideas derive from employees whom the state pays quite handsomely.
Furthermore, after initial investment, funding innovation could be self-financing, using royalties from previous successful investment. It just needs to unlock that potential. Alongside producing efficiency savings, this significant reform need not require significant capital outlay at the outset.
It feels as though successive Governments have been so concerned to avoid the tag of allowing the waste of capital on ideas that do not immediately point to a return, or being portrayed as blurring the boundaries of the NHS, that they have not fully established the means and mechanisms of making ideas realise their potential. Lip service is paid to the desire to innovate, but practical measures that make it possible on anything like the scale that is possible are not in place. It is more a question of whether the NHS can afford not to exploit the potential savings and revenue streams presented by these ideas.
I am aware that the current position is not completely bleak. The Minister will be able to cite a pipeline of ideas and he will know that the UK has established capabilities in this field. The medical device sector alone makes a significant contribution to the UK economy, with an industry turnover of £13 billion and 55,000 employees. That industry, however, is generally a supplier to the NHS. We need to move to a situation in which the NHS itself generates devices that can save—with a small s—the NHS from bearing the full commercial costs of products that the private sector has developed in its place. Why is it not possible for the Government to establish an innovation strategy with a real focus on extracting value from the pipeline?
I am not suggesting that there should be centrally driven, random speculative investment of taxpayers’ money in half-baked ideas suggested by any clinician. The regional innovation hubs are already primed to sift ideas. For example, NHS Innovations South West has criteria that each product has to meet before it can receive further assistance. First and foremost, it must bring significant benefit to patients in terms of better outcomes and quality of life. It must also be patentable. The return on investment must meet a minimum threshold and it must be commercially viable—that is, there must be an assessment of a global need for the technology, making it a worthwhile investment for commercial partners.
Once that has been established, the issue is how to develop the ideas to their full potential. Several ideas exist in the south-west. A cancer diagnostic endoscope and meniscus knee repair device are both, subject to completing clinical trials, able to meet the criteria to which I have referred. Given that oesophageal cancer is one of the fastest growing cancers globally and early diagnosis can have a significant impact on savings in the NHS, it is highly desirable that that progresses quickly. The meniscus device should significantly improve patients’ quality of life and postpone the need for an expensive total knee replacement by up to five years, thereby again saving the NHS huge sums of money.
My concern is that it is purely by chance that the private sector has not taken this work further. The current NHS process for capitalising on these innovations is not quick enough. There is limited access to NHS funding, and progress is inhibited by insufficient incentives and enabling mechanisms to encourage trusts to invest in such promising cost-saving technologies. Hospitals exploit these ideas elsewhere in the world and significant royalty streams accrue. They would make a recurring contribution to the much required efficiency savings that the chairman and chief executive of my hospital trust are desperately trying to find at present.
In conclusion, I believe that the NHS is a powerhouse of innovation, but that that is not being harnessed sufficiently to accrue the tens of millions that would be available to individual NHS trusts if a bolder approach were taken by Government. I urge the Minister to consider carefully the potential of the ideas in the NHS and to do all he can to ensure that the scope of the Carruthers review is broad enough to deliver recommendations that will allow the huge value that exists to be realised.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on securing this debate on what is widely recognised as an important issue for the NHS because of the crucial role that innovation plays in the present and will play in the future. Given his ideas, views and thoughts, he might seek to arrange a meeting, if he has not already done so, with my noble Friend the Earl Howe, who is the Health Minister with responsibility for innovation.
I shall respond by first setting out the Government’s approach to innovation, before looking at the specific issues that have been raised by my hon. Friend. As we all know, and as he has reiterated, we face a significant challenge. Without real change, the cost of health care will grow faster than the rest of the economy. Moreover, the quality of care in vital areas such as cancer will lag behind other countries, and the gap between the best and the worst NHS care will continue to grow. More of the same simply will not do. We cannot afford it and patients do not deserve it. We need, in other words, to innovate, as my hon. Friend has said.
Fortunately, there is a vast reservoir of innovation to tap within the NHS. It has a long history of innovation, invention and research by great people and great institutions. Ian Donald, for instance, pioneered the use of ultrasound in the 1950s. Sir Peter Mansfield’s work led to the MRI scanner in the 1970s. The Sanger Institute developed the first working draft of the human genome in 2000. We continue to lead the way in cutting-edge research, as the recently announced first European trial of embryonic stem cell research at Moorfields eye hospital demonstrates.
The creative spark that kick starts the long and difficult journey from initial idea to widely adopted treatment is a precious and delicate thing. We need to do all we can to encourage that creativity within the NHS—to grow and propagate the ideas that clinicians and others have for the benefit of their patients. While we continue to achieve great things, we must always strive for more.
Innovation does not happen when power is centralised and people are told what to do, so the single biggest thing that we are doing to encourage innovation is to devolve power to clinical professionals, trusting their professional judgment and their desire to do their best for their patients.
Our modernisation of the NHS will encourage innovation in three main ways. First, it will place the patient at the centre of decision-making about their own care—informed, empowered and able to choose the best possible appropriate care—so that providers will have to innovate to stand out. Secondly, it will have a resolute focus on improving health outcomes—publishing the data and rewarding excellence—so that hospitals and others will have a powerful incentive to innovate and improve. Thirdly, it will place power in the hands of local clinicians, thereby getting rid of the huge and wasteful bureaucracy that can strangle and frustrate innovation, and let the knowledge and expertise of clinicians drive innovation locally.
That will lead to a more personalised NHS, with services tailored to patients’ needs; a more integrated NHS, with solutions that tackle inequalities, improve access and deliver care closer to home; and a better quality NHS, with every provider encouraged, rewarded and incentivised to constantly improve outcomes for patients.
There is also a wider economic imperative for innovation. The health care sector, including pharmaceuticals, medical technology, research, equipment and services, directly or indirectly employs hundreds of thousands of highly skilled people in companies, from small and medium-sized enterprises to global giants, generating billions of pounds in revenues, all helping to drive future economic growth. Innovation in health care applies to everyone—scientists, nurses, doctors and managers. In fact, it applies to all those working to deliver better health, better care and better value. We must ensure that innovation is not simply the preserve of elite minds at the top of august institutions, because it is not just about the latest drugs or high-tech pieces of equipment. The spirit of innovation should be part and parcel of every part and every level of the NHS.
One of my favourite examples of innovation in action is a jug—a health care assistant in Milton Keynes decided that patients whose fluid intake needed close attention should each have a bright red water jug. That particular innovation gave ward staff a clear visual reminder of those patients’ specific needs, helped them to better care for patients, avoided the need for drips, reduced the risk of infection, cut patients’ stays in hospital and consequently cut the cost of their care. That is all because of a bright red jug and one very bright idea from a health care assistant.
We have also made a strong and ongoing commitment to innovation through research. The Government’s plan for growth cements our commitment to health care and the life sciences as a force for growth in the economy. The Government’s National Institute for Health Research aims to support outstanding individuals, working in world-class facilities and conducting leading-edge research focused on the needs of patients and the public. We have recently announced a record £800 million in additional NIHR funding for experimental medicine and translational health research. We will also streamline regulation and improve the cost-effectiveness of clinical trials, speeding up the process of translating research into better lives for patients, their families and their carers.
However, no matter how extraordinary the innovation or how miraculous the invention, it is worthless if it is not used, as my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury said. Any innovation that is not widely adopted is a tragic waste. Like many large organisations, the NHS’s uptake and spread of innovation has often been slow. We need to raise our game, as my hon. Friend alluded to. We need to do more to recognise the contribution that innovators and innovative organisations make and to encourage adoption and diffusion across the NHS on a scale never seen before.
Mr Andrew Smith
In that context, can the Minister say what future he sees for the work presently being undertaken by the regional NHS hubs, especially in the area to which I alluded earlier where there might not be an immediate commercial return?
Mr Burns
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will certainly come to that matter during my comments and before we finish the debate.
A substantial amount of work is already under way, including the £60 million that has been invested in regional innovation funds, which support front-line staff to develop and spread new ideas and validate the notion that it is good to challenge the way things have always been done. The funds are massively over-subscribed and have to date given money to more than 300 projects. Further work includes the innovative technology adoption procurement programme, which aims to encourage the NHS-wide adoption of high-impact innovative medical technologies, and the innovation challenge prizes, which reward the ideas that tackle some of our big health and social care challenges, improving productivity and the quality of health care. The first innovation challenge prizes—ranging from £35,000 to £100,000—were awarded in March. Winning entries helped to reduce waste and increase the benefits of medicines, helped people with kidney failure to lead a more independent lifestyle and helped in the early diagnosis of cancer. An expert panel is going through this year’s round of applications and I very much look forward to seeing the results later in the autumn.
There is also much of value in the innovation hubs, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. Identifying, developing and commercialising new ideas within the NHS is a must, and we need to adopt a systematic approach to that. We also need to ensure that all parts of the innovation pipeline—invention, adoption and diffusion—are more efficient and effective. The NHS chief executive’s innovation review will consider that and how we can achieve better value for money.
As announced in “The Plan for Growth,” NHS Global is being developed to help NHS organisations to compete in the global market. NHS Global seeks to build and grow the NHS brand and reputation overseas, enabling the NHS to compete in the international health care market and to exploit the commercial value of its technologies, products and knowledge. In doing so, NHS Global acts as another mechanism to support great ideas generated in the NHS being widely accepted across the world.
In the case of the company mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury—Odstock Medical Ltd—if it has not done so already, I suggest that it contacts the NIHR’s invention for innovation scheme. i4i supports product development and the guided progression of innovative medical product prototypes, and I strongly advise the company to get in touch with it if it has not done so.
The Health and Social Care Bill, now passing through the House of Lords, will place a legal duty on the NHS commissioning board and on clinical commissioning groups to promote innovation and research. Soon the NHS chief executive, Sir David Nicholson, will set out achievable, high-impact recommendations that will inform the strategic approach to innovation that is so important within a modernised NHS. We will open up NHS procurement to small and medium-sized enterprises, simplify the process and challenge them to come up with solutions to problems within the NHS. We have committed £10 million to the small business research initiative.
Innovation can never be mandated and it should never be restricted to a particular group. Innovation in health and social care will come from a wide variety of partners—for example, NHS staff and patients, private companies, the voluntary sector and academia. They all have a crucial role to play in pushing forward the boundaries in developing and dreaming up innovative products and services to meet the ever-increasing demands of a modernised NHS.
Innovation is not easy. It takes more than just a good idea to innovate; it takes courage to speak out against how things have always been. Innovators have to hold and develop an idea often in the face of opposition and keep pushing forward until it begins to bear fruit. I fully appreciate that the process of innovation can be a very frustrating time. We must encourage people, so that they do not become frustrated and give up. They should be able to pursue dreams and ideas that will bring a greater improvement to the general provision of health care and the NHS.
Let us imagine a world without antibiotics, without insulin, without cancer screening. Then let us imagine a world with a cure for cancer or where we can reverse dementia and end heart disease. Without innovation none of that would be, or could be, possible. Innovation is essential for the future of our NHS and for the future of the UK economy. I assure hon. Members that the Government will do everything in their power to continue to promote innovation, so that it can flourish and develop along the lines that we would wish.
Public Transport (Disabled Access)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Earlier this year, I was visited by a group of my constituents in Wigan who were from Hunter Lodge, a facility for people with disabilities in the borough. They told me about the endless difficulties they faced in trying to do some of the simplest things that most of us take for granted—shopping, visiting friends or getting to work. They tried to go by train to a nearby town, but had been forced to travel by relay because there was only one wheelchair space available on the train. When the train arrived, the space was already taken. They were told that instead of travelling in the carriage with other people, they would have to go in the guard’s van alongside the bags, parcels, bikes and other goods.
I am angry that, in 2011, that is still considered by some people an acceptable way to treat fellow human beings. Astonishingly, when I looked into this matter, I found that they were the fortunate ones. Half of all train stations do not have level access, so it turns out that they were actually lucky to even be able to get on to the train platform in the first place. Despite some real improvements—not just under the previous Government, but under the Government before that—we are not moving fast enough. The Association of Train Operating Companies said earlier this year that progress on making train station platforms accessible to people with physical immobility is far too slow, and that Network Rail and the Department for Transport need to get a grip of this situation.
I am also concerned about the closure of ticket offices, an issue that many people have raised with me. Without a ticket office, it is nigh on impossible for many people—particularly those who have sight problems, are in wheelchairs, or have learning difficulties—to even buy a ticket to get on the train. In many instances, ticket office staff are the only people available to assist people physically to get on to the train. The McNulty review recommended closing 675 ticket offices around the country. I am aware of the economic realities, but I would like to see a commitment today from the Minister to assure us that he will not sanction proposals that would leave ticket offices entirely unmanned. That is not just because ticket office staff are often the only people available to help people on to the train. Many people contacted me in advance of this debate to say that so much of the staffing issue is about feeling safe on public transport—having the security of being able to get to where they are going without being stranded, which had happened to them in too many cases.
When I secured this debate, I was contacted by young people from across the country, who described to me, in a compelling way, how they had been unable to even get on and off trains because there were no ramps available, the ramps that were available were too short or too long, or nobody was there to help them use those ramps. More than anything else, I was struck by the indignity and humiliation that ran like a thread through all those stories. They need electronic ramps on every train so that they do not have to suffer both the indignity and the anxiety of hoping desperately that somebody will be available to help them, having to make a fuss as they stand on a train simply to get off it, and, in some cases, being stranded on a train because there is no one available to help them.
Although some train companies have made adjustments that already meet the demands of the law, the situation is still not good enough. For example, Virgin Trains has three spaces for wheelchairs on its “Pendolino” service. Although that is welcome, it makes it extremely difficult for people to travel together. Is it seriously too much to ask to adapt trains so that young people, such as those in the Chamber today who are listening so intently to the debate, can go out with their friends? Is that seriously, in 2011, too much to ask? Early next year, the franchise for the west coast main line will be put out to tender. Will the Minister give me a commitment today that one of the criteria for interested companies will be the progress they make on this issue?
I am also deeply concerned that the rhetoric flying around at the moment, about people on incapacity benefit, is making an already dreadful situation much worse. In an independent survey for the charity Scope, 15% said they had suffered high-level abuse on public transport. It is a damning indictment of the current situation that the campaigning organisation Trailblazers struggled to find young people who would even take part in a recent report on the issue, because they found the prospect of engaging with public transport too distressing to contemplate. People with concessionary railcards tell me that they have been questioned to a humiliating degree on public transport about the nature of their disability, particularly when that disability is not physically obvious. Will the Minister agree to take this up with the rail companies to ensure that the practice stops urgently?
The difficulty is not just restricted to trains, although that was one of the key issues raised with me by my constituents. I have also been sent stories about people trying to travel on airlines who have been asked to pay extra charges to carry medical supplies—even oxygen canisters—which were classed as excess baggage.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
On air travel, my hon. Friend might want to comment on the practice of some airlines. Even when an air bridge is available at an airport to take passengers off without the need for stepped access, airlines use the access stairways to reach aircraft for what I suspect are financial reasons. In such situations, a person in a wheelchair often has to wait until a winch or lifting vehicle is brought out from the terminal. Apart from the delay that that involves, it is very embarrassing to be picked out in such a way when the facilities are available in the airport to avoid that. That should also be addressed as part of the joined-up approach that is needed.
Lisa Nandy
I could not agree with my hon. Friend more. The example he gives highlights exactly the indignity and humiliation that far too many people must face when they try to do something that the rest of us take for granted. I am grateful to him for raising that point.
On the buses, people seem to fare little better. Half of all disabled people say that buses are a concern for them. Even something as simple as boarding the bus presents a problem. Many buses still do not have ramps and, even when they do, a common story emerges from all the reports that I have been sent from across the country of drivers refusing to stop because it would take too long to allow somebody to board, or because the space allocated for a wheelchair is taken up by a pushchair. I want to be absolutely clear on this point: I am not advocating that there should not be space for pushchairs; it is simply unacceptable that there is not room for everybody.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. This is an issue that concerns the whole of the United Kingdom, although this debate obviously relates to the UK mainland. In my previous job as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, I sat on a Committee that was responsible for bringing forward legislative change that enabled public transport, both bus and rail, to ensure access for disabled people in wheelchairs in particular, but for visually disabled people, too. That is starting to roll off the Assembly line, to use a pun, in Northern Ireland. Does the hon. Lady feel that the Government might take that as an example of how legislation could be introduced and delivered, in conjunction with local councils and other responsible bodies, to ensure disabled access for those who are wheelchair bound or visually disabled, not just to public transport—bus and rail—but to taxis as well?
Lisa Nandy
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he gives me the opportunity to pay tribute to some of the public transport companies that have worked hard to make real strides forward on this issue. All those examples show that it can be done if there is a will for it to be done. It is up to all of us here in the Chamber to ensure that we push as hard as we can to make this happen.
Seat belts on buses are not routinely provided for wheelchair users. I have been sent some absolutely appalling stories of the indignity that people suffer when the bus drives off too fast and their wheelchair is not properly secured. Blind people have told me of their particular difficulties in identifying which bus is arriving, and knowing when to get off. Those issues could be rectified by introducing talking buses, by introducing seat belts, by introducing more space for buggies and wheelchairs, and training for drivers.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has made an incredibly compelling case. May I commend to her the campaign of Guide Dogs Cymru, “Walk a Mile in My Shoes”, which I had the pleasure of taking part in last week with councillors and Assembly Members? She was talking about a joined-up approach, and that event brought home to me the difficulties experienced by people with sight loss and other disabilities negotiating city centres and getting to the bus or train station in the first place, let alone dealing with announcements and so on.
Lisa Nandy
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. Guide Dogs for the Blind was one of the most helpful organisations when I was preparing for today’s debate. I am sure that the Minister will want to consult it further about some of the difficulties my hon. Friend mentioned.
Almost half of all bus operator revenue comes from public funding. I want to see the Government putting serious pressure on companies in receipt of that public subsidy to ensure that the changes that I am outlining today happen. We not only can use our procurement power to make this happen, but we must and should do so, and make it happen quickly. What is so strikingly clear is that laws and training are essential, but alone they are not enough to solve the problem.
Several years ago I had the privilege to work for the former Member for Walthamstow, Neil Gerrard, an inspirational MP who, among many other things, while I worked for him brought into law the Private Hire Vehicle (Carriage of Guide Dogs etc.) Act 2002. It closed a loophole in the law under which black cabs had to carry guide dogs but private hire vehicles did not. It was symbolically important and particularly important to blind people, who obviously rely more on private hire vehicles than any other form of transport, but Guide Dogs for the Blind tells me that, since then, the situation has not got much better because the Act has not been enforced. That underlines how enforcement is essential if we are to make progress.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate and on an excellent speech so far. On the subject of guide dogs, will she join me in congratulating my colleague in the London Assembly, Caroline Pidgeon, who has recently run a successful campaign to force Transport for London and the Government to lift the ban on guide dogs for disabled people on the escalators of the tube, docklands light railway and overground railway? That is another part of the whole picture.
Lisa Nandy
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning that, making it clear that the issue is cross-party. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which started so much, was passed with cross-party consensus, and it is on that basis that we ought to go forward. All of us ought to play our part in making things happen.
Given that enforcement is so badly needed, I would like to hear a commitment from the Minister that mystery shopping exercises should be part of the franchising agreement on the railways and that he will find a mechanism to impose that condition on companies in receipt of public subsidy. Although feedback and surveys are an important part of any organisation, what is clear from the evidence sent to me by a whole range of organisations is that feedback alone is not enough. Often people’s experiences on public transport are so distressing that they do not want to relive those experiences by having to send in a survey response or make a complaint, so I want the commitment to mystery shopping exercises to be part of our agreements with such companies.
Sixteen years ago, the landmark Disability Discrimination Act was passed in this House with cross-party support, making a promise to people up and down the country that we have simply not fulfilled. We have failed many of those observing in the Chamber, and others up and down the country. A full 13 years after the regulations that breathed life into the Act came into force, it is nothing short of appalling that the situation is not better than it is. There are 12 million people with disabilities in the UK and, as we all live longer, that number is increasing. There is not only a moral imperative to take urgent action, but a social and economic one. Yet, in advance of the debate, I was contacted by Scope, Whizz-Kidz, Transport for All, the National Children’s Bureau, the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, the Association of Train Operating Companies, Passenger Focus, the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign and many others all expressing exactly the same concerns: not only did they say that the situation is not getting better fast enough, but many are concerned that the situation is getting worse and not better.
With cancelled station upgrades, cuts to discretionary travel and ticket office closures, we need a renewed focus on the area, and urgently. That is one reason why I am so deeply concerned that the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee has been abolished. Will the Minister at least commit to setting up a working group, with transport companies and people with disabilities represented, to drive forward the necessary improvements to public transport by the 2020 deadline? Many of the organisations that I mentioned, which are far more expert in the area than I am, have expressed real concerns to me that we will not meet even those most basic standards that we promised to meet 16 years ago. The Government have made it a real priority to get disabled people into work. Setting up a working group would at least send a strong signal that they are committed to that. If they are going to ask people to go to work, they ought to be committed to enabling them to have the means to achieve that.
One of the most shocking things that I have found since my constituents came to see me in Wigan several months ago is that many of us—myself included—live our lives blissfully unaware that such an appalling situation is a daily reality for people up and down the country. I am pleased that so many Members are present today, and that we are using our position in this House to shine a spotlight on that situation. I am concerned, however, about what happens after today. Too often in this place we have a debate, express concerns and make our views known, but nothing happens next. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that any company in receipt of public subsidy will be required to report annually to Parliament on the progress that it makes in the area? The requirement need not be onerous—perhaps an annual letter to the Select Committee on Transport, for example. However brief, it would help to ensure that those of us who have the luxury of ignoring the problem are not allowed to do so.
Finally, I want to tell the Chamber about one of my constituents, Michael. He is 15-years-old; because of illness he is in a wheelchair and has been all his life. He was born alongside the Disability Discrimination Act which gave hope to people in his situation throughout the country. Essentially, if we will not take action to meet by 2020 the commitments made 16 years ago, we are saying to Michael, “You have lived all your lifetime with these problems. By the time that you are 24 years old, you will still struggle to work and to see friends. We will not give you the freedom that you both need and deserve.” We in the House are simply not doing enough to help Michael to live his life.
If we are to resolve the situation, it will require not just action but a shift in our collective mindset. It is not people with disabilities who need to adapt their lives—they have already done their bit. It is the rest of us who need to change our attitudes towards them. In the end, the question is about the sort of society that we want to live in. Do we want to live in the sort of country in which we say to my 15-year-old constituent, Michael, that we have no place for him? That is not the sort of country that I want to see. We should be ashamed, and I hope that all of us, in every part of the House, will make the issue a long overdue priority.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on a compelling and powerful speech, even if I did not quite agree with everything that she said—but such is life.
I do not wish to pre-empt my ten-minute rule Bill next Tuesday, which I recommend to everyone, but I have a few preliminary comments. All in the Chamber know how much the concessionary fares are valued by our constituents, even if we tend to argue about them at election time. One particular imbalance, however, needs to be addressed. Able-bodied pensioners who can use the buses get the concessionary fare, but disabled pensioners who cannot use the buses and have to rely on dial-a-ride services, demand-responsive services or other community transport must pay their own way. That seems to me to be a glaring imbalance, which no doubt runs contrary to the spirit of the legislation when introduced by the Labour party—none the less, an imbalance.
I understand that certain councils choose to provide free transport for the disabled, but not every council does. With the increasing budgetary pressures, I fear that fewer and fewer will. The imbalance seems not only unfair but contrary to the spirit of equality and of human dignity. However, I realise that a spending commitment would be involved, which is no doubt frowned upon. To many of the pensioners who contact me and say, “I don’t need the card; I am wealthy enough to pay myself,” I make the point that people can always pay their own way—no one is forcing them to have a card. Equally, however, my constituents in Blackpool do not deserve to be treated differently from my constituents in Wyre. Everyone should have the same right to free transport and free travel, and any hon. Member who wants to support my Bill, may add their name after the debate.
One of the great honours of being an MP is the opportunity to chair the all-party group on young disabled people. Its secretariat is wonderfully provided by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. I am not a great fan of the all-party group system as a whole because too many strike me as unnecessary vanity projects, or an excuse to visit obscure countries that I have never heard of. However, when I was approached, I said that I would be the chairman on one condition—that the group is meaningful. I wanted outcomes, processes and reports. I did not want to sit around just talking about the problems; I wanted to hear what we could do about them. That is certainly what I got.
Report No. 1 of the “Inclusion Now” series is called “End of the Line”. Leaving aside the fact that that was also the title of the Conservative party’s report on coastal towns when in opposition and that that is now in the Government’s bottom drawer, I welcome it because it explains what happens to many disabled people. They may want to get off at a station, but when they arrive no one is there to help them, and they may go to the end of the line, which is often many stations away, because no one will help them to get off.
The report was followed by a public hearing of the all-party group to which we invited numerous transport providers. At the start of the meeting, I said that I did not want negativity, and to hear just the bad. As the hon. Member for Wigan said, we have made strides, and if we tell train, bus and taxi companies only what they are doing wrong, they will not be encouraged to fix what is wrong.
Some dreadful cases came to light. Buses pulled away sharply with wheelchairs going everywhere, and passengers with imbalance issues were sent flying. The assisted passenger registration service limits people’s spontaneity because they must give 24 hours’ notice. If I had to give 24 hours’ notice of where I wanted to go, I am not sure that I could live my life as it is.
The hon. Lady referred to accessibility issues at stations. I know that many of the buildings are old—they have been around for a long time—but with better creativity and a bit of thought, I am sure that solutions could be found. Perhaps the most controversial issue was staff awareness and individual members of staff who did not meet the standards expected by their own company. That is a difficult issue. Many people think that such members of staff just need more training. I take a slightly more libertarian view, because we cannot control what occurs in people’s minds. I would love to make them all think as they should think, but that cannot happen. However, every disabled person who suffers should have the confidence to enter the complaints process knowing that they will be listened to, and knowing that they will not be dismissed.
We cannot have passengers being left on trains, and we cannot have staff members ignoring them at stations. We cannot have that attitude, but we must recognise that there is a problem because of the age of many of our trains, buses and so on. I often travel by train into Manchester from Preston on what is essentially a bus on wheels. I suspect that it is older than me. It is unrealistic to expect it to have all the knobs and flashing buttons that a modern train might have to enable passengers to draw attention to the fact that a disabled passenger may be trying to get off. Such technology might ease the problems for staff also.
I pay tribute to National Express, which does an excellent job in providing for disabled people. There are issues about the Government’s funding of coach services that might threaten some of the subsidies, but I had better not go there. However, I have asked National Express why it does not introduce a 50% reduction card. If it has so many disabled passengers, I am sure it will keep them if it introduces a card under its own steam.
The hon. Lady was critical of the abolition of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, but I do not share that criticism. We are having a quango cull, with many worthy bodies disappearing, but Equality 2025, which is based at the Home Office, will absorb its responsibilities, and a wider equality framework may be more effective at achieving the goals that she wants.
I do not want negativity, so I shall mention a success from the Trailblazer campaign. Carrie-Ann Fleming, who lives in Kendal, often had to wait an hour at a bus stop for the right disabled-access bus to come along. She thought that that was not good enough, so she launched a campaign and fought really hard. For once, a local council listened to someone complaining about something. That rarely happens, but it did in this case, and the council will alter the timetables to ensure that she can get on a bus without having to wait an hour.
I will close with a plea for human dignity. Some 47% of disabled people experience some form of abuse on public transport, according to Alice Maynard of Scope. She is no relation; I do not know which of us is more relieved about that. Even I have experienced abuse. I take a bus to the station every morning on my way here. At 7 am, I am often a bit groggy and a bit woolly-headed, and I do not always keep my balance when the driver puts his foot down and roars off from the bus stop. I may go flying, and on one occasion I crashed into a business lady who was not very happy about that. I apologised, and explained that my balance is by no means perfect, and that I struggle on buses. She said that I should not be on a bus if I cannot stand up straight. I just said, “I beg your pardon?” I could not believe it, because I have as much right as she does to be on the bus. It is not called able-body transport; it is called public transport. That means that we should all be able to use it, not just the able-bodied.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on the way she introduced this important subject. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). I have spoken about the issue in several debates, and I am grateful for the opportunity to make a few further points.
The starting point must be that measures to make it easier for disabled people to use mainstream public transport are simply part of a wider objective of ensuring equality for disabled people in society overall. Public transport should be accessible and affordable, so that disabled people can travel when and where they like. That is a basic principle of equality and human rights, and it underlines all that we should be doing in this area. I know that many hon. Members want to speak, so I shall make only a few comments.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan said, the percentage of the population with a disability is substantial, and the figures for Scotland are even higher than those for the United Kingdom. It is estimated that about 20% of the population of Scotland have a disability. At some stage, almost all of us in the Chamber will have a disability, which shows the scale of the issue. People with mobility issues make around one third fewer trips than those without such difficulties. Disabled people are disproportionately dependent on public transport, and 60% have no car in the household, compared with 27% in the general population. In March 2009, only 53% of licensed taxis in Britain were wheelchair accessible, and in 2009-10, 39% of buses in Great Britain did not meet the accessibility requirements in disability discrimination legislation.
I am pleased to say that in my constituency the situation is considerably better. Every taxi, but not private hire cars, in Edinburgh must be wheelchair accessible. Two bus companies serve Edinburgh, and 100% of the buses operated by Lothian Buses, which is Britain’s largest publicly owned bus company, are accessible, as are 85% to 90% of the buses operated by First Group, to be fair. That illustrates the fact that we can make a difference and that changes can be made. It is a matter of political will, as well as legislation and regulations.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) for securing the debate. Before coming to the House, I spent 30 years working in the area of special needs and disabilities, and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) is right to say that planning sits at the centre of those issues. If we put the needs of disabled people at the centre of our planning, whether for a leisure centre, a system, a school, a college or a train, we will get it right for those disabled people, but also for everybody else—that comes from 30 years’ experience.
Mark Lazarowicz
Absolutely. I intended to make that point later, but I shall deal with it now. It is essential that regulations are tightened and that funding is provided. The wonderful phrase “joined-up government” needs to apply in this area because there are many examples of simple things that could be done to improve access for disabled people. There are also examples of where the consequences of a minor local policy or local works were not thought through and had a detrimental effect on access for disabled people. I believe it would be good to retain the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, because whatever support is provided in-house by the Department for Transport, it will not have the same voice as an independent body that speaks for its users. I shall not go into that in detail, but we shall see what the Government have to say on the matter.
A lack of joined-up thinking can make a difference. For example, I have seen trains that have good accessibility, such as spaces for disabled people and a ramp that is operated either manually or automatically, so that when the train arrives at a station, people can leave it easily. However, there may be temporary works at the station—perhaps a barrier or building work has been set up, or a load of bricks has appeared at the end of the ramp—and people cannot get off. That point is not only about accessibility for people in wheelchairs; accessibility can be difficult for all sorts of people because, to put it bluntly, not enough thinking has been done on how to join up different aspects of a service.
I will refer again to Edinburgh, where 100% of Lothian Buses are now accessible to disabled people. A few years ago, a number of buses were introduced with an increased number of spaces for wheelchairs. However, there were a number of complaints, particularly from pensioner groups, because the buses would drive off quickly and people would lose their balance and fall over. The issue was solved simply by installing more rails and grips for people to hold on to once on the bus—a common-sense approach that was not thought of at the time, but which, due to consultation with local people, was resolved quickly. That is an example of the need for simple, joined-up government, as well as regulations and spending, and it is why the voice of disabled people is particularly important. There is no better way to understand where services or adaptations are needed than talking to those who use them.
I have two final points to make. First, the campaign for talking buses is an eminently sensible proposal that seeks the mandatory installation of audio and visual announcements on all new buses. The cost would be small compared with the overall cost of new buses, and that provision could be attained by amending the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000. As I understand it, the Department for Transport currently does not intend to legislate on that, but I hope that the Government will change their position. Such a measure would make great common sense and be useful to all passengers, not just those with issues of accessibility.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) for securing this important debate. Is my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) aware that in many countries campaigns such as that for talking buses, run by Guide Dogs for the Blind, are commonplace? When I worked in Japan more than 20 years ago, talking buses were the norm and were not seen as unusual. I do not know when that began, but it is imperative that such a system is introduced in this country as soon as possible. If that is not carried out voluntarily by bus companies in receipt of public funding, strong pressure should be put on them.
Mark Lazarowicz
My hon. Friend makes a good point; I have been on buses with that facility in other parts of Europe. If regulations are not changed, the speed with which that facility spreads through the bus network will be so slow that it will take 10, 20 or 30 years for a reasonable number of buses to be equipped, if it happens at all.
Dr Huppert
Just before the previous intervention, the hon. Gentleman touched on the point that I wish to raise. A lot of the interventions that we have mentioned—not all of them, but those such as talking buses and having more grab rails—would benefit everybody. For too long, and in so many ways, we have accepted a design that is no good for either disabled or non-disabled people. The principles of inclusive design should help everybody, and we should encourage that as well as those things that specifically help some groups of disabled people.
Mark Lazarowicz
Indeed. I do not want to turn this into a debate about the advantages of publicly owned bus companies, although I am sure some hon. Members would like me to do so. However, Lothian Buses is an example of a company that, because of its nature, has the advantage of being close to local needs. The newer double-decker buses are longer and provide more space for buggies, pushchairs and wheelchair access. They are gradually introducing audio and visual announcements. It can be done; it is about making a choice and taking a decision on what is needed. I suspect that legislation on public transport might allow local authorities to specify regulations on improving local access more clearly—perhaps that point is for another day.
My final point is to emphasise the need for a joined-up approach. We will not get every bus and train in the country fully accessible overnight—it takes time to make such things happen. People on train journeys frequently use more than one operator. They may get on a train that is accessible, but change en route to a service that is entirely inaccessible. They may not have realised that and assumed, or even inquired and been assured, that the next train would be accessible. However, if it is not, they will be stuck on a station, perhaps without assistance, and will have difficulty in completing their journey. A bit more thinking and a more joined-up approach would improve such situations, although I accept that that cannot be done overnight in every part of the country.
That takes us back to the issue of equality. Every passenger, whatever their position, should have the right to start and complete their journey without unreasonable obstruction or a lack of facilities that prevents them from doing so. In spite of the work carried out by the previous Government, which I hope will be continued by this Government, the issue needs to be pushed up the agenda more often. Thinking and regulation need to change, or else, despite all the improvements, it will be many decades before we can say that we have a fully accessible transport service in this country.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) for securing the debate and for her passionate advocacy of a noble cause.
My hon. Friend is right: how we support and care for the blind, the partially sighted and the disabled in our communities is the hallmark of a civilised society. I pay tribute to many friends from over many years, including those I represent in my constituency of Erdington, who have battled against adversity, often in the most extreme circumstances. Their approach to life was captured by one sufferer of multiple sclerosis from Castle Vale who has been confined to a wheelchair for many years, but said, “I’m disabled, but I’m proud of being disabled.” Disabled people do not want our pity; they want to play a full part in society. They expect us to discharge our moral duty to them, and for those with responsibility to comply with obligations in the law.
My hon. Friend was right to say that there was all-party consensus on some of the landmark changes over the past 20 years, including the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. However, if that is the hallmark of a civilised society, by that test and under successive Governments, our society has sadly too often failed the disabled. Having said that, this Government are moving in the wrong direction.
Today, we rightly focus on transport, and the problems with it are set out in the excellent Trailblazers report. That report includes the personal experiences of an admirable woman, Jagdeep Kaur Sehmbi—Jagz, to her friends—who is here today. She has undertaken tremendous work on behalf of those who are wheelchair bound and the disabled more generally, and she has demonstrated just what the problem is. Let me quote just two paragraphs from what she says in the report. On the issue of trains, she says:
“A couple of times there has been no one with the ramp to help me off the train at my destination platform, even though I had informed them at the other station and been assured that someone would have the ramps ready.”
On the issue of buses, she says:
“Once the driver didn’t drive up to the pavement, not because he couldn’t, but because it was easier for him to drive off after the other passengers had got on, so I had to get off in the road, which meant the ramp was very steep and then I had to find a place to get up onto the pavement.”
Jagz has not been deterred from continuing to travel, but it is clear from my experience that many who have such bitter experiences give up and stay at home, just when they want to play a full part in society.
The report goes on to detail its findings, and I want to refer briefly to four. First, on transport, the disabled end up having less choice and paying more. Secondly, the young disabled, in particular, feel very much that they are second-class citizens. Thirdly, disabled people cannot always access the first taxi, train or bus to come along. As a result, one disabled person told me, “I felt humiliated about being there on the pavement. Everyone else could get on board, but I couldn’t.” Fourthly, the assisted passenger registration scheme demands 24 hours’ notice, which in turn restricts spontaneity and independence. It also fails to provide a service that passengers can count on, which again is evidenced by Jagz’s experience.
Of course, there is an obligation on the companies that provide those services, and I will come to one such company in a moment. Crucially, however, the Government must also act—not only on the framework of regulation, but where there is evidence that companies are not discharging their obligations properly.
That leads me to London Midland. The company is proposing—the proposals are on the Secretary of State’s desk right now—to make significant changes, including to the manning of stations. In my constituency, for example, Gravelly Hill station and Erdington station will no longer be manned after 5 o’clock in the evening. Centro has concluded a consultation process, and 18,000 representations have been made, including many from the disabled, objecting to the proposals and seeking to bring home what they would mean.
I have been working with the Royal National Institute of Blind People, Mencap and the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign to bring home what the impact of the proposals will be, and I want to give one example. The formidable Mike Hughes, who is a former police officer, is now blind. He is chair of the west midlands region of the RNIB. He tells a story about how he got off at Sutton Coldfield station at 9.30 one evening. Normally, he immediately rings for a taxi—he has two numbers programmed into his phone—but this time he could not get a signal. He was completely lost, and this is a strong, self-confident individual. Fortunately, the person manning the ticket office, who was about to close it down, helped him out and took him somewhere where he could get a signal and call a taxi. Like Jagz, Mike said, “I wasn’t deterred, Jack, but I know many people like me who’ve had bad experiences and who were deterred from travelling.”
As a result of the growing concern among the disabled, I and the organisations that I mentioned met London Midland in July. With me was the admirable Rebecca Swift, the RNIB’s regional director. The people we met from London Midland were perfectly decent individuals, but I hope that hon. Members will forgive me for saying that they were somewhat uncomprehending of their proposals’ consequences for the disabled. We asked whether the company had consulted. They replied, “We think we did.” We asked how. They said, and I kid thee not, “For example, we put up posters in the stations.” Our next question was, “Posters for the blind and partially sighted?”
We then asked, “Do you think you’re covered by the obligations in the law?” The London Midland people said, “Not sure. We’ll go away and write to you.” They wrote back and said, “We don’t think we are, but in future we will act as if we were and consult properly.” That was in accordance with what we had argued. The problem is that they now propose to go full steam ahead with their proposals; there has been no change. That is simply not good enough, which is why I have written to the Secretary of State asking whether he will intervene. I will say more about that in a moment.
Others have contributed to this important debate. Mencap, for example, has focused on National Express, a company I know very well. It is the biggest long-distance coach company and it is a reputable company. It is also a good employer and it is sensitive to the needs of the communities it serves. However, on 18 routes, the 30% of fares that are concessionary are now at risk because of the changes to the bus service operators grant. I wrote to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), and the reply I got today said:
“All coach operators, including National Express, are free to continue to offer half-price concessionary travel to older and eligible disabled people on a commercial basis.”
That sounds like the legendary saying by Anatole France that the rich and the poor are both free to sleep under Paris bridges at night. National Express is not a charity; it is a good company, but if it is to continue to offer concessionary fares in a significant way, it will require continuing Government support.
What is so admirable about the initiative taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan is that she has ensured that the voice of the blind, the partially sighted and the disabled is properly heard in the debate. I know that the Minister understands some of the issues, and when he responds to what he has heard today I hope he says how the Government intend to proceed. Specifically, London Midland cannot be allowed to blunder on regardless if the disabled are the casualties of its actions. It has not consulted properly, but the organisations representing the disabled have, crucially, offered to work with it on a consultation. That is why I have requested a meeting with the Secretary of State that involves Jagz and the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, the RNIB and Mencap. No fundamental decisions that impact seriously on public transport and, in turn, on the disabled should be taken unless the voice of the disabled has been properly heard.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on securing the debate and on the excellent way in which she introduced the subject for us. The background is that 60% of people with disabilities have no access to a car and are therefore totally reliant on public transport, whether bus, train, tube or taxi. For them, public transport is of even greater importance than for the rest of the population, and that fundamental point should underlie the debate.
In London, the treatment of passengers with disabilities is probably, although it does not always feel like it, rather better than it is in many other parts of the country. That is not an accident; it has happened because we have a regulated bus service and a unitary transport authority. It has also happened because of the hands-on approach taken by the former Greater London council and, for most of the period since their introduction, by the Greater London authority and the Mayor in pushing the whole disability agenda. The Mayor’s office also has a very effective advisory network that can ensure that it delivers on those issues. Under the previous Mayor, Ken Livingstone, there was an ambitious programme to convert a large number of tube stations to disability access, for which he should be commended. That is the issue that I want to refer to in a local context.
There are 11 stations—Network Rail and underground— that serve my constituency. Of the Network Rail ones, on the North London line, Upper Holloway, Crouch Hill and Canonbury have proper disability access, with ramps and so on, and all are staffed at present. With the stations that are mixed London Underground and Network Rail, there is an utterly ridiculous situation. In the case of Highbury and Islington, for example, the London overground station has disability access—it has recently been refurbished to bring in the East London line—but the underground station does not, so it is impossible to get off an overground train and on to an underground train there, because there is not proper access to enable people to do so.
Finsbury Park is a very old, busy and crowded underground station, and Network Rail, the underground and buses converge there. After a lot of argument, Network Rail has agreed to put in a lift between street level and the mainline platforms, which are well above street level. At the same time, Transport for London has cancelled its plans to put in a lift to the underground platforms underneath. Thus we have a ludicrous situation in which someone in a wheelchair, arriving at Finsbury Park station by the overground, will be able to get from the mainline platforms to the street, but will not be able to get to the underground.
I use that station frequently and every day passengers carry people with wheelchairs, and carry buggies, up and down. The overcrowding and lack of accessibility, and the danger that goes with that, are ridiculous. I hope that the Minister will pass on to his friend the Mayor of London what I have to say to him: please think again about the cancellation of the conversion scheme for a large number of London stations. It is making the lives of many people a misery and something should be done about it. The conversion needs to happen much more widely, across the network.
At other stations there is no access for people with disabilities. Those include Archway, which was also the subject of a plan from Ken Livingstone. Three stations that were due to be converted have had their plans cancelled. Highbury and Islington is the other, and only one station—Tufnell Park—has accessibility to the tube, which is by means of a lift. The situation is ridiculous, but I do not plead that case just for my constituency. I am using it as an example that could be repeated across London; it is not exclusive to my area.
My second general point is about buses and accessibility. After a lot of campaigning, London buses have ramps, and drivers are supposed to stop in such a way that the ramp can be used, enabling wheelchair users to get on the bus. Many drivers are good, reasonable, responsible and decent, and they stop in the proper place, giving people time to get on. That is fine, but unfortunately some drivers do not do it. Buses are often crowded, so often people with a wheelchair have to wait for many buses to go by before they can get on. On a cold winter’s morning, it is no joke when a person in a wheelchair is stuck for a long time simply trying to get on a bus. Space is lacking, because it is taken up with buggies and other things, so while I obviously accept the point that awareness is needed, we need training to go with it.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will dwell on that point for a moment. He referred to gaps in his constituency, but in the past 15 or 20 years there has been movement on the issue of infrastructure across the UK. However, there appears still to be a gap in staff training and awareness of problems. Although there has been some progress on that in the past 10 years, more needs to be done, particularly as some people do not seem to be aware of the crucial issues that affect partially-sighted and disabled people.
Jeremy Corbyn
I absolutely accept that attitudes, awareness and training have improved, but we need only look at the building we are in to see that we still have very far to go in achieving proper accessibility. I realise that those things are not simple, but nevertheless they must be achieved.
Outside London, where the bus service is largely less regulated, facilities tend to be much worse, and we need a much tougher approach from central Government to ensure that bus companies do as they should, bus stops are appropriate, and buses are sufficiently regulated and regular to enable people to get around. It is no fun to be waiting in a wheelchair in the cold, unable to move around to get warm, as other people who are not in wheelchairs can.
As to Network Rail, the McNulty review stated:
“The Study recommends that the default position for all services on the GB rail network should be DOO”—
driver-only operations—
“with a second member of train crew only being provided where there is a commercial, technical or other imperative.”
How many times have we seen people trying to get on or off trains at remote or suburban stations at night, when there are no staff on the station or the train—only a driver, who cannot see everything or be everywhere? It is then a great struggle simply to get on or off a train. The McNulty proposal to go to a largely driver-only-operated service means that many suburban and rural services will have no member of staff on them, and in addition there will be unstaffed stations. That is obviously a huge deterrent to anyone who has special needs getting into the station and on to the train. I hope that the Minister will make it clear that he does not want that aspect of the McNulty proposals to be introduced.
Additionally, it is often difficult for people, particularly those with sight difficulties, when there are no staff on the station and only ticket vending machines are used. The machines are often the wrong height or badly placed. Getting a ticket and getting on the train when there are no staff becomes a nightmare. It is unnecessary and wrong to have such arrangements; they are uncivilised and we should put a stop to them.
As many as 10,000 ticket staff across the country could lose their jobs between now and 2013 if McNulty is implemented. Those people are there to help, bring security and support people. Surely we need to give a lot of thought to that, and quickly. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan on obtaining the debate, and I hope that the Minister understands that the role of the Government is to regulate and to ensure that services are provided: because 60% of people with disabilities have no access to a car, public transport is the only option for them. Buses and trains must be accessible, stations must be staffed and the staff must be trained to assist people as necessary. That is the only right and proper thing to do.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
It is a privilege to be called to speak in the debate following so many excellent speeches that covered so much ground. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on securing the debate and setting out the grounds for it so well. So much has been covered that those listening can benefit from a shorter speech by me. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] It is good to have support for that from colleagues.
Of course, many of us take access to public transport for granted. When a train is delayed or we wait a bit for a bus, we all grumble about the inconvenience and how much more arduous the journey is. However, for many people, a delayed train is insignificant compared with the difficulties that they face every time they try to travel. If their bus in London is diverted, they may not simply be able to use the underground instead. If they are lucky enough to be in an underground station with full access for people with physical disabilities, they can travel to only 59 other stations out of the 270. Public transport should be just that—a transport service accessible by all members of the public, no matter what their need.
Disabled people in this country have the right not to be discriminated against or harassed in relation to the use of transport services. A right of access to transport for disabled people was first set out in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, before a broader right to access was enshrined in the Equality Act 2010. However, as many disabled people know only too well and tell me at constituency surgeries and on the streets, that right simply has not become a tangible reality. We desperately need to ensure that what we have put on the statute book is embedded in reality in all local services.
I am sure that we will hear from the Minister about the work that the Government have done, but there is much more to do. Just over 50% of bus stops in London are fully accessible. That represents a huge increase, but is still a very disappointing number, given what is needed. Almost every group that represents people with disabilities has highlighted the problems with the lack of proper transport provision. We have heard several times about Trailblazers. I have met representatives of several disability groups in Cambridge. They raise those problems regularly.
However, we must not concentrate just on people with physical disabilities. There is an idea that someone who is disabled can only be someone in a wheelchair. The issues affecting people in wheelchairs are, of course, very important and have been discussed, but disabilities are not always obvious. I want to highlight some of the particular issues faced by people on the autism spectrum, including those with Asperger’s syndrome. We have a number of such people in Cambridge, which is why I raise the issue. Roughly one child in 100 under the age of 18 has an autism spectrum disorder. The National Autistic Society recently produced a very good video, which I urge hon. Members to watch. It highlights what autistic people face when trying to use public transport. That is particularly hard for them because it is not obvious that they have any issues at all.
We need to consider the issue more broadly than just by thinking about how people get from A to B. We must consider how the problem with access to transport affects people’s overall well-being—their entire lives. If people are discouraged from travelling, what does that do to other areas of their lives? I am referring to their ability to meet people, form friendships, find work and pursue interests—to have all the life experiences that the rest of us take for granted. This is not just about transport; it is about everything else that happens.
Clearly, it is important to pick up a lot of the details. Many very small things could be fixed. That is why I highlighted the work on guide dog access done by Caroline Pidgeon in the London assembly. These are not hard things to do, but they are very important.
There is much still to do that requires a bit more. We need to ensure, for example, that all the Crossrail stations have proper toilet facilities. It is important to remember that something as simple as a toilet facility can represent a huge block for people who are disabled, whether because they are in a wheelchair or because they have one of the range of conditions, such as Crohn’s disease, that have a huge effect—
Mark Lazarowicz
This may be an obvious point, but toilets at stations should be open. The same goes for toilets on trains as well.
Dr Huppert
Indeed. We need not only to build such facilities, but to ensure that they are open, accessible and functional. That is a very important point. There are too many instances in which that is not the case. We have a particular issue in Cambridge, although it does not involve transport. A developer wants to move the disabled toilet up a few floors in a shopping area. Of course, that would make it very hard to get to.
I will not say too much about the concerns over the reductions in relation to discretionary fares. That issue has been highlighted, and I share the concerns expressed. However, as well as the detailed changes and the infrastructure changes, which are extremely important—
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
I know that my hon. Friend is keen to proceed, but infrastructure is certainly a concern of the Chippenham Accessible Rail Transport group. The group and I have thrown our weight behind Network Rail’s attempts to bring disabled access to Chippenham railway station, but Brunel’s railway is considered a heritage asset. I hope that my hon. Friend and the Minister would agree that when the council consults heritage groups about changes to achieve decent disabled access on our public transport, we need those groups to get behind such proposals and work with the industry to make them a reality—they should not be allowed to become a block to progress.
Dr Huppert
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. From my role as co-chair of the Lib Dem transport group, I know that he campaigns very hard for his railways and I congratulate him on that. We have had a number of conversations on what is a real issue not just for his station, but for a number of others. There is a tendency for some heritage groups and people who work in that area to take the attitude that nothing must ever be changed, which is simply not what we want. Freezing all old buildings as they were in the ’70s is not always the right thing to do. The point of public transport is not to be a beautiful monument, but to enable people to travel, and travel easily. I hope that we see more movement, which is happening with much of the heritage sector, towards the idea that we need to come up with creative solutions that enable things to work, as well as, we hope, to look good and continue that heritage. That is a very important point, and there are a number of other points that one could talk about in relation to infrastructure.
As well as the piecemeal changes and infrastructure changes, which affect disabled people on a personal level, there is the issue of planning a long-distance journey. The sheer lack of information and the complexity involved in finding information make it very hard. If someone wants to travel between two places that they do not regularly travel between and that are a long way apart, rather than within a city, they have to check the accessibility of every service, or they risk taking a tube, a train and a bus and then finding that they cannot take the next bus. It is extremely hard to plan a long-distance journey. There is a huge need to ensure that there is linked-up availability of information, whether that is available online or in other ways—different people want to use different methods—so that people know that their entire route is accessible and they will not end up at the end of the line with the problems that have been identified.
This has been a very useful debate and it has been good to see mostly cross-party consensus on what we need to do. I look forward to the Minister explaining what we will be doing to deliver on the hopes and aspirations that we all have. In some ways, the issue is simple: we need to ensure that the transport service that we provide as a nation is fit for everyone. I look forward to hearing how that will be achieved.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, particularly as this is my first time speaking from the Front Bench. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on securing the debate. As ever, she spoke with great passion on behalf of those in society whose voices are too often unheard or ignored. She painted a very clear picture of the difficulties, indignities and anxieties that disabled people face in trying to travel on public transport and feel safe. It is clear from the number of people here today to listen to the debate and from the number of hon. Members from every part of the UK who have participated that there is a collective, cross-party will to tackle that inequality.
The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) also spoke with passion, and this place is richer for his being here and speaking with the real understanding that comes from personal experience. Among the many issues that he raised, what struck me was the importance of changing attitudes. That is difficult and we cannot legislate for it, but I want to hear from the Minister what the Government are doing to ensure that staff are aware of and trained to respond to the needs of disabled passengers, so that they do not face the same bitter experiences that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) described, which he had heard about from his constituents.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) made important points about the practical steps that can be taken to improve accessibility and rightly pointed out that this is about not just buses, trams and trains, but airports and taxis. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) reminded us that 60% of disabled people have no access to a car and spelled out both the progress made and the challenges that remain here in London. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) rightly highlighted the needs of people with hidden disabilities, such as autism or learning difficulties.
We would all agree that good public transport is vital to disabled people and their families. It provides access to education, employment, health care, sports, leisure and volunteering opportunities. It enables disabled people to live independent lives. It helps to combat social isolation. Using public transport empowers disabled people, allowing them to develop self-confidence and skills.
The previous Labour Government made huge strides forward in improving public transport, including by making it more accessible for disabled people. However, there is clearly more to do. As we have heard today, disabled people still cannot access the services that many of us take for granted, but during the 13 years of Labour government the UK saw spending on rail that was almost two and a half times higher than we inherited. The creation of Network Rail brought significant modernisation of lines and stations, and a programme of replacing the ageing train fleet began, with 4,800 new accessible train carriages built since 1999.
Labour also significantly increased the support for local transport services, with investment more than doubling on our watch, including improvements here in London to buses and the tube, as we have already heard. Local bus services saw investment rise by almost 300%, and across the country bus fleets were modernised, often incorporating features to make them more accessible.
The Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations 1998 and the Public Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations 2000 made a number of changes to make using public transport easier and safer for disabled people. The majority of buses now have handrails and wheelchair spaces. All new tram and train carriages must be accessible, and there is a requirement for audio-visual systems—vital improvements for disabled people, but benefiting everyone else, too.
Parents with pushchairs find it easier to get on a bus because it has a low floor and a space for the pram. They no longer have to struggle to fold a buggy while holding a toddler and bags of shopping; I speak from experience. Visitors feel more confident in using the train and tram because there is a display showing where they are and what the final destination is. I cannot resist an example from my own city. It is reassuring to hear Wendy Smith, the voice of Nottingham’s tram, tell someone what the next stop is when it is dark outside or pouring with rain, or when the tram is crowded.
In 2005, the Department for Transport began trials of on-board audio and visual passenger information systems, with a view to amending the 2000 regulations to make such equipment mandatory if the trials prove successful. We need to ensure that that research progresses, and I ask the Minister to set out clearly what his Department is doing to extend such provision across the bus network. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan said, under the 1998 regulations, all trams and trains must be fully accessible by 1 January 2020. What is the Department doing to ensure that train companies meet that deadline?
Unfortunately, the progress achieved under Labour is now under threat as a result of this Government’s reckless deficit reduction plans. We recognise that transport spending needs to be reduced, even though that means making difficult and unpopular decisions, but the Government are going too far and too fast, with serious consequences. Funding for local transport will be reduced by 26% by 2015—over a quarter of the budget gone. With ring-fencing removed and local authorities under pressure, transport spending could even be lower. Worryingly, the Financial Times reported today that Campaign for Better Transport has uncovered the fact that English regions have already lost more than 1,000 bus services—over a fifth of all those supported by local authority funding. Funding for the concessionary fare scheme has already been cut by £223 million, and the bus service operators’ grant will be cut by £254 million by 2013.
Overall, the Government are taking away half a billion pounds from local transport funding, causing unaffordable fare rises and the closure of routes, which will hit everyone in our communities. Disabled people, who are often on low incomes and especially reliant on public transport, will be hit even harder. The scheme that provides half-price coach travel will be wiped out a stroke at the end of this month, putting long-distance travel out of reach for many pensioners and disabled people, and threatening some routes.
In many areas, school transport, which is particularly important for disabled children and young people, is being cut or removed, hitting family budgets and excluding disabled youngsters from after-school activities such as sports, drama and music. That comes on top of the removal of education maintenance allowance and a threefold hike in tuition fees. No wonder so many young people feel that they are being priced out of opportunity.
Quite rightly, many hon. Members have focused on the need for physical changes to public transport vehicles to make them more accessible to disabled people, but such changes will simply be irrelevant if the services that people need are not running, or if disabled people cannot afford to travel on them. Families up and down the country, including those of the disabled, face a cost-of-living crisis. Household bills are going up as a result of rising prices, wages are stagnant for those in work and many people face unemployment, including nearly 1 million young people, as today’s figures show. They have to rely on benefits, which are not keeping pace with inflation. How on earth will they cope with the 28% increase in rail fares planned for the next three years?
Disabled people face the additional worry that scrapping disability living allowance and replacing it with the personal independence payment might mean that they lose the help that they have been receiving with the extra costs of mobility. That fear is particularly acute for disabled people in residential care, including young people living in residential schools and colleges. As it stands, the Welfare Reform Bill will remove the mobility component of PIP from those young people, even though there is no evidence of the double funding that the Government claim. What discussions has the Minister had with his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions about their internal review of those proposals? Will he update us on their progress?
Disabled people already face barriers to their inclusion and participation in society. The Government should be on their side, breaking down those barriers, not building them even higher. How will the Minister do that? What assessment has his Department made of the impact on disabled people’s access to public transport, particularly that of young disabled people, of his 26% local transport funding cut? Will his Government’s decision to increase rail fares by 3% above inflation for the next three years have a disproportionate impact on disabled people? If so, how will he militate against it? Has he assessed how the loss of ticket-office staff will affect disabled passengers and what are his conclusions?
As the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee goes up in smoke as part of the bonfire of the quangos, how will the Minister ensure that disabled people, including young disabled people, are properly consulted on decisions that can have a profound impact on their lives? As we have heard today, disabled access to public transport is an issue in constituencies across the country. He needs to explain why disabled people are being asked to bear the brunt of his Department’s spending cuts.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)
As always, it is a pleasure and honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. May I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), not only for the work that she has done today, but for her career at the Children’s Society and Centrepoint? She has been a stalwart of the disability lobby for many years, and I am sure that she will be here for many years to come.
It was a pleasure listening to the debate. It is a shame that some colleagues have not stayed. There is a problem with this Chamber sometimes; people say their bit and then disappear, which I think is wrong, no matter which side of the House they are from. The debate was going well until the brand new shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), stood up. I welcome her to her post. Perhaps in future she will listen to the debate a little bit more, rather than read a prepared speech, which was a party political rant. The issue is not party political, and we had agreed before the debate started that the previous Government had done brilliantly when they were in power. Previous Governments have tried hard. We were left with a difficult economic situation. One of reasons why the previous Government had not done more was that it was difficult and expensive to do so. If we all admitted that, we would get a proper debate in the future.
I apologise to the hon. Member for Wigan. I am not the Minister responsible for the portfolio; I do roads and shipping. The Minister responsible is away on other ministerial business, and in my response I will not be able to answer directly many questions that have been raised by hon. Members today. Each individual will be written to by the Minister responsible and the officials.
Lisa Nandy
I am grateful to the Minister for stepping in at short notice to cover his colleague’s brief. Will he take a request back to his colleague to meet me and a small number of representatives from some of the campaigns that I have mentioned to put to his colleague directly some of our concerns and proposals? I am concerned that the issue could get lost as part of a wider Government agenda.
Mike Penning
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. One of the things in the many notes that were being passed back and forth here was that that would take place and that I would put my colleague on the spot, because the hon. Lady asked for a working group. Yes, we will have a working group while other proposals go forward. That is certainly important.
In my constituency—we are all constituency MPs at heart—I have raised such issues to my own station, where the lift is out of operation. The station is managed by London Midland. I have had detailed and quite strong conversations before I became a Minister, and certainly since.
There is often no sense as to why certain things happen. A profoundly deaf and blind constituent of mine had long been campaigning for a suitable bus for a disabled person to stop in my town centre, and it is there and has happened, which is great. However, the stop is next to a river and the railings have been taken down. Probably no one would believe that, but imagine someone who is blind, like my constituent, getting off the bus where the railings have been taken away and there is a river. Although it is not deep, we know what the problems would be. What was the logic of that? Where were the brain cells when that decision was made? Who knows what engineer decided to do that, but, as a constituency MP, I shall find out.
The points that have been raised today cross a spectrum of disabilities. Very often we talk about those who are wheelchair bound. The problem is that there are a plethora of different types of wheelchair. A lovely young man called Jack asked if he could do his work experience with me in the House of Commons—this story relates to what the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said about the state of the Palace and its lack of accessibility. I said yes to the work experience and a risk assessment and an access assessment were carried out. The answer was then no, because they could not accommodate the size of Jack’s wheelchair. Well, in the end we did. It was a long-drawn-out route around the Palace, as I was in Norman Shaw at the time, but we did it. So often, we are told why we cannot do something instead of how we can do something.
Jack and one of my closest friends who sustained some of the worst injuries in the London bombings and survived spoke to me about the matter. They said, “Don’t keep wrapping us up in cotton wool. We’ll tell you how we can do things. We’ll tell you how we can get there, rather than you telling us.” That is why working groups and the different lobby groups are so important.
Interestingly, when it comes to access into buildings, I was told that we should ask disabled people how much access they need because we are paying through the nose—Jack’s words not mine—for the works. A whole industry has grown up around access into buildings for disabled people. Actually, the whole matter could be dealt with much more simply and easily.
Why on earth would they want to put the toilets two floors up in Cambridge? I know exactly where the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) is talking about because my daughter is studying at the Anglia Ruskin college in Cambridge and has a Saturday job in the place mentioned. The question that we must ask, as constituency MPs and Ministers, is why. Tell me the reason why that has happened and why we are in that position? As I mentioned earlier, I will pass on any question that I cannot answer this afternoon to my colleague who will then respond in writing.
All front-line rail staff are supposed to be trained, but will it make any difference if they do not have the will, inclination or empathy to help? One thing that we can all do is to say to young people, “Let us be your voice.” That is what we are here for. They do not want to fill in survey forms; they have had enough of that. I say, “Just give us a little whisper and tell us on what train or on what bus a member of staff was rude to you or did not do what they should have done.” It is amazing, colleagues, what a letter or a size 10 boot from an MP can do to energise employers to look at what their staff are doing.
Dr Huppert
When the Minister argues that we should offer to be the voice of some of these people, I assume that he would also support the various parliament-type organisations that enable disabled people to be their own voices and to represent themselves much more strongly.
Mike Penning
Such organisations do a fantastic job, but we need to ensure that there is access to this place. The all-party parliamentary groups, of which my hon. Friend is a member—I was chairman of several all party groups when I was a Back Bencher—are about access. They are not just talking shops. They are there to say that people have the right to come forward.
It is a requirement of rail employers to ensure that their front-line staff have the right sort of training.
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank the Minister for giving way; he has been generous with his time. I am interested in his point about writing letters. If I forward a letter to him from Disability Action in Islington concerning the cancellation of the step-free access programme to the London underground, I am sure that he will be straight on the phone to Boris Johnson who will make sure that these programmes are reinstated. Have I got a deal there? Is that okay?
Mike Penning
I will do a deal with the hon. Gentleman. If he writes to me, I will pass on his letter to the Minister responsible who will then be in contact with Boris. I am trying to think of the station that has had the lift installed.
Mike Penning
That is right. The lift cost £25 million. One issue that has been raised is the age of our network. I do not know whether that applies to our buses. Actually, the situation in London has dramatically improved because all buses have disabled access now. Although we have more modern trains, our stations and platforms are a massive issue for all constituency MPs.
Jack Dromey
I thank the Minister for his constructive response to the proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan for a wider discussion to take place and the establishment of a working group. That is welcome indeed. May I just ask him about the specific issue of the changes being proposed by London Midland? Given that the proposals are now on the Secretary of State’s desk, will he facilitate a meeting with the RNIB, Mencap and the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign because it is important that their voices are heard before a final decision is made?
Mike Penning
The point that I was going to get to is the urgency of some issues, including the one that the hon. Gentleman has just mentioned. It is the Minister of State who is responsible for that issue. I will put a note on her desk tomorrow asking if that meeting can take place. I am not responsible any further than that, but I will do what I say and anyone who knows me will say that that is the case.
I thank the hon. Member for Wigan, who is relatively new in the House, for giving the Minister a list of the questions that she wants answered; it is ever so helpful. Notes are flying back and forth and I must have 20 notes sitting on my desk here. Clearly, I will not be able to answer all of them in the four minutes that I have left and I am not going to try. I do not wish to have a pop at the hon. Member for Nottingham South. I remember sitting in the same seat as a shadow Health Minister for almost exactly the same amount of time that she has been in the House. It is an honour and a privilege to be in this place whether in government or in opposition. Sometimes it may seem difficult, especially when one thinks of the huge number of civil servants backing the Minister and writing his speeches for him. However, I must say that I have not read the speech that they wrote for me. Well, I read it last night and did not like it. They will get used to me; I am just that way.
Let me stress again that all the points that have been raised are about tone and about people’s rights. I know that we are not allowed to indicate who is in the Public Gallery in Westminster Hall, but we are privileged that people have come here, sometimes in very difficult circumstances, to express their rights and to say, “Why am I getting a bum deal compared with other people?”—I do not know how Hansard will work that one out, but there we are. The situation is fundamentally wrong, but it is not easy to resolve. I hate the word “targets” but we have targets for 2020, which the companies will have to meet. In the hon. Member for Wigan’s constituency, there will be a franchise change in 2013. I am conscious of her question, and the Minister responsible will respond to it. I also need to know what rail operator she refers to. Perhaps she can write to me and let me know. We got rid of guards vans in 2004. If that was a comment, it might have been sarcastic, but it was also manifestly incorrect. There are no guards vans to travel in.
The rail companies operate a taxi service—I do not like it because it is a cop-out for them—and the people to whom the hon. Lady referred should have been offered a taxi for the short distance that we are talking about. Instead of one person waiting to be shuttled to their destination, which is an appalling situation to be in, common sense should have prevailed and a taxi should have been ordered to take all four people to their destination. If the hon. Lady can write to me and tell me the name of the company, it would help. People are out there checking up on these companies. It is a huge rail and bus network, but there are people out there checking out what is going on and whether promises, commitments and franchise agreements are being met.
Instead of being typically British and just putting up with things because that is the way we are, we should perhaps be more like the German transport people whom I met earlier today. They would not put up with this because they have a completely different attitude. They expect a service and they tell people in no uncertain terms where they should be. Let us speak up on behalf of our constituents. Constituents need to complain to their MPs and their MPs should tell us. If that happens, perhaps we can have a service for the 21st century that everyone deserves.
Violence against Women and Girls
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Thank you very much, Mr Robertson, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
Although I am delighted to have secured this debate on the prevention of violence against women and girls, I wish that it was unnecessary. However, the facts and figures on gendered violence remain so alarming that it is clear that, as a society, we are still failing to approach the problem with anything like the urgency or seriousness that it deserves. Currently, two women a week are killed by a partner or ex-partner and every year 60,000 women are raped. Sexual harassment in schools, communities and workplaces is routine, and an estimated 6,500 girls in the UK are at risk of female genital mutilation.
According to the British crime survey, in Brighton and Hove—where my Brighton, Pavilion constituency is located—around 25,000 women are likely to experience repeat domestic violence as adults. Last year, 277 women sought housing advice and 102 homeless applications were made—[Interruption.]
John Robertson (in the Chair)
Order. Could we have silence at the back, please? Thank you.
Caroline Lucas
As I was saying, 102 homeless applications were made due to domestic violence. Nearly 11,000 women experience physical and emotional violence; more than 2,700 women experience sexual assault; and more than 6,600 women were the focus of stalking. Those are big figures, but behind each number is a real life that has been hugely damaged by this experience. Moreover, 44% of the 264 young people assessed by the youth offending service in Brighton and Hove in 2009 had been abused—that is nearly half—and 42% had experienced domestic violence at home.
I therefore welcome the fact that, in its call to end violence against women and girls, the Home Office has recognised the need for a targeted approach to tackle the ongoing scandal of violence against and abuse of women and girls. The Government’s strategy purports to put prevention at its heart, yet I fear that that objective risks being undermined by a lack of joined-up thinking and the policies of other Government Departments.
Furthermore, as the domestic violence team at Brighton and Hove city council has told me, in the Government’s strategy, there is no allocated funding for prevention of and early intervention for violence against women. All the money is still being allocated to crisis work, with only limited attention being given to addressing the cause of the problem—in other words, perpetrators’ behaviour. In Brighton and Hove, since 2004, the city has been working specifically with perpetrators to address their abuse and I am proud that it was the first programme to be accredited nationally by Respect. The local authority has committed to maintaining the programme, but due to demand it is not able to accommodate all the referrals. It finds it very difficult to turn away people who want to join the programme, because it is so concerned about the risks that people face if help is not available.
That work needs to be properly funded. It should not be made dependent on sympathetic council administrations, or put at risk because of central Government spending cuts. Brighton and Hove, whose intelligent commissioning on domestic violence is recognised as good practice, has a local commitment to developing a strategy on violence against women and girls, with work already under way to deliver that strategy. However, not many local areas have the same kind of co-ordinated approach and I want the Government to consider making it an obligation that all local authorities must fulfil.
As well as the historical focus on tackling the aftermath of violence, such as bringing perpetrators to court, we must ensure that preventing violence in the first place is much more of a priority across Government. Let us take, for example, work with young people in schools. The importance of that work is underlined by the findings of an NSPCC study, which revealed that almost half—43%—of teenage girls believe that it is acceptable for a boyfriend to be aggressive towards a female partner. One in two boys and one in three girls believe that there are some circumstances in which it is okay to hit a woman or force her to have sex.
Young people in Britain not only have an alarmingly tolerant attitude to violence against women but many of them are exposed daily to the results of our failure to confront such attitudes head-on. For example, a YouGov poll for the End Violence Against Women Coalition found that a third of girls are subjected to unwanted sexual contact at school, with sexual harassment being routine. In addition, the NSPCC found that 33% of girls between 13 and 17 who are in an intimate partner relationship have experienced some sort of sexual partner violence. Although there has been an increased focus on other forms of bullying, many schools fail to recognise that unwanted sexual contact, sexual harassment and sexual name-calling are also specific forms of abuse that girls suffer routinely.
Girls from ethnic minority backgrounds may face additional risks. The Home Affairs Committee recently reported that schools are failing to respond to girls who are at risk of forced marriage and may even be putting female students in greater danger. We will wait and see whether forcing someone into a marriage becomes an offence in its own right, as the Prime Minister has indicated that it should be. I hope very much that he will introduce legislation on that issue.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
The hon. Lady made an important point about early intervention and prevention, particularly in relation to girls. Does she agree that we must do a lot more in schools and that we must talk to our girls about self-empowerment, self-esteem, gender equality and empowerment? Does she agree that we need to do much more in those areas?
Caroline Lucas
I thank the hon. Member for her intervention, not least because I know that she has a great deal of expertise in this area, and of course I absolutely agree with what she says. It is also interesting that young women themselves tell us that they want things to change. Around 52% of young women who were polled said that ending domestic violence against women and children is the issue that they care most about. That is according to research carried out by Girlguiding UK in conjunction with the Fawcett Society, the British Youth Council and Populus.
All over the UK, women’s organisations are doing innovative work with these young people, often with only minimal resources. For example, Rise, a charity based in Brighton and Hove, delivers a personal, social, health and economic preventive education programme on healthy relationships to schools across the city. It is also currently working to integrate the Women’s Aid “Expect Respect” programme into work that is currently taking place in primary schools. Rise also delivers “Break for Change”, a groundbreaking group for young people who are aggressive in their relationships. That group is for the young people’s carers, too. The Home Office itself is currently running a campaign called, “This is abuse”, which is aimed at tackling teenage relationship abuse.
However, work to prevent violence against women and girls cannot be left to occasional campaigns or women’s organisations working in partnership with good schools where they can. It must be an absolutely integral part of education and policy that is delivered in every single school.
Unfortunately, it appears that the Department for Education is dragging its feet on this issue. The commitment to teaching sexual consent in personal, social and health education is welcome, but it needs to go much further and include all forms of violence against women, including teenage relationship abuse, forced marriage, FGM and sexual exploitation. It should also be linked to work on gender equality and work that challenges gender stereotypes.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
I just wanted to draw on some of the experience that I have gained from the Education Committee. As I understand it, only three hours of teacher training time is dedicated to behaviour and discipline in schools throughout a two or three-year degree course. There is very little hope that we can even start to explore the issues affecting young women who face violence and give them any sort of strategy if the teachers have absolutely no awareness of behaviour and behaviour training. There needs to be a concerted effort from the Minister’s Department to work with the DFE to deal with that problem.
Caroline Lucas
I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. I did not know that particular piece of information and it makes me even more alarmed than I was when I first stood up to speak. It shows that this is part of a much bigger issue, which is about ensuring that our teachers are properly equipped to pass on that vital training.
It is interesting that Education Ministers have signalled that they want these issues to remain outside the statutory curriculum, running the risk that many young women and men will never be exposed to education designed to reduce gendered violence. Cuts to specialist local-level posts, such as domestic violence co-ordinators and teenage pregnancy co-ordinators, risk exacerbating the problem even further.
In its report, “A Different World is Possible”, the End Violence Against Women Coalition recommends a “whole school approach”, with heads taking a lead, teachers been trained on the issues and all students receiving comprehensive sex and relationships education on consent, equality and respect. That is already a top priority in Brighton and Hove—it builds on work by a number of the agencies that I mentioned earlier. The local authority’s strategy states:
“Evidence shows that to be effective in domestic violence prevention work, addressing the issue in PSHE and SRE lessons or in assemblies has limited impact and value, if the messages promoted are not supported by other initiatives and the broader ethos of the school.”
I therefore ask the Minister to call on her colleagues at the Department for Education to clearly identify one single Education Minister to lead on preventing violence against women and girls. I also ask her to tell us what contribution she has made to the Department for Education’s internal review on PSHE, and whether she has argued the case for sexual consent and all forms of violence against women to be a compulsory part of the curriculum.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister hosted a summit on tackling the commercialisation and sexualisation of children and announced a range of policies, many of which I warmly welcome. However, amid the messages about consumer and parent power, there was an element missing: empowering young people themselves to be media literate and to cope with the bombardment of often inappropriate images. Although I recognise that the measures announced will go some way towards cutting down on the images that young people are exposed to—outside schools, for example—we can safely say that this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Like any parent, I absolutely understand the desire to protect our children, and one of the best ways of doing so is through specific education that allows young people to be more in control of their sexualisation, rather than being dictated to by the media or by advertising. There is no plan as yet, however, specifically to address that in schools.
Earlier, I noted that central Government cuts might undermine efforts being made to tackle violence against women and girls, and I am particularly concerned about cuts to legal aid. Informing women of their legal rights and giving them access to legal representation is one way of empowering them and of trying to protect them against violence. It can give them the information they need to stand up to their abuser. There are serious risk implications, therefore, for women who cannot access legal aid. By reducing women’s ability to access legal aid, the Ministry of Justice risks damaging work at the Home Office on preventing violence against women and girls, and I would love to know whether the Minister shares my concerns about that.
I also wonder whether the Minister is dismayed by the Home Secretary’s proposal to change the eligibility requirements under paragraph 289A—the domestic violence rule—of the immigration rules. That would mean that all applicants under the domestic rule must be free of unspent criminal convictions. That actively undermines the Government’s commitment to eliminate violence against women. Will the Minister contribute to the UK Border Agency consultation, and remind the Home Secretary about the coalition Government’s obligations and commitment to protect all women from domestic violence?
The Equality Trust points out that 24% of women in Britain are worried about rape and that all kinds of violence are more common in more unequal societies. It stands to reason that preventing violence against women and girls is closely linked to tackling inequality and other social injustices. As just one example of what happens if we fail to do that, Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, tells me that more than a third of girls in the youth justice system have experienced abuse and a quarter have witnessed violence at home. Of the more than 4,000 women currently serving a prison sentence, more than half report having suffered domestic violence and one in three have experienced sexual abuse. For the vast majority of those very vulnerable women, prison is not the answer, and that is why both I and the Howard League for Penal Reform support community solutions for non-violent women offenders. I am keen, therefore, to see the Government’s target interventions to ensure the prevention of violence against women and girls address intersections of gender with other social inequalities.
I stress that the Government’s work on preventing violence against women and girls needs to encompass an international perspective. Here, too, we see evidence of a lack of leadership and concerns about co-ordination. There are now a number of very welcome Government strategies that reference international violence against women and girls, so oversight of all the different processes is vital and, for maximum impact, the different strategies and policies across Government should be coherent and mutually reinforcing.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
Is it not important to bring the international communities into this—the women and girls of different nationalities with different cultural backgrounds? The Prime Minister will be attending a conference in a couple of weeks’ time at which he should raise that point, so that we can get the international communities behind us.
Caroline Lucas
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman’s important intervention.
At the highest level, a member of the National Security Council should have explicit responsibility for women, peace and security, to ensure that gender perspectives are taken into account in all discussions. Despite some references in the “Building Stability Overseas Strategy” document and in the UK national action plan for the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, violence against women and girls is still not fully recognised as either a foreign policy priority or a security matter. It is not recognised as both a cause and a consequence of conflict. When violent conflict occurs, violence against women and girls is not seen as a priority matter.
The UK Government must take a leadership role internationally, to ensure that preventing violence against women and girls stays on the international agenda. Globally, about one in three women or girls have been beaten or sexually abused in their lifetime, and 75% of the civilians killed in war are women and children, so I am keen to hear from the Minister what has been achieved, or what has changed in our approach to violence against women as a foreign policy issue, since she was appointed to the role of overseas champion about a year ago.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate and on her excellent and comprehensive speech. I agree that the international effort that we must be part of, and lead, is important, but it is vital that we lead by example. Yesterday in the Chamber, concern was expressed about the woefully low level of prosecutions for human trafficking, which affects many women and young girls, and about our country’s reluctance to take the lead on issuing a guardianship programme that would help us to secure those prosecutions. Does she have any thoughts about that?
Caroline Lucas
The hon. Member is absolutely right to point to the guardianship programme as a concrete measure that we could take to show exactly that kind of international leadership. That would make a huge difference to some of the most vulnerable people coming into our communities. I very much support the proposal, and the work that she has been doing on it.
I was talking about the Minister’s role as the overseas champion, and I wonder if she can tell us what her priorities for that role will be over the coming year. Can she confirm whether she has a budget with which to carry out her responsibilities?
I am mindful that I have asked the Minister a number of questions, so I will wind up now. Making our schools safer for girls, enabling young men to challenge their peers, changing attitudes that blame women for violence and ensuring that the equalities team’s work is underscored by the policies of other Departments are all things that would make a genuine difference to the lives of women and girls here in Britain and around the world. The old adage that prevention is better than cure may well be familiar, but in this case it rings particularly true.
The Minister for Equalities (Lynne Featherstone)
I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing this debate. The matter is a most important and serious one, both in this country and internationally, and I want to assure the hon. Lady that despite the very difficult times we are in, the Government are absolutely committed to nothing less than ending all forms of violence against women and girls. I, too, wish that it was not necessary to have such debates, but the statistics in this country are truly terrible, and across the world they are far worse. The issue is sometimes hidden, so there is a fear and a danger that it will be marginalised when priorities compete. However, as the first page of the action plan says,
“VAWG services should not be the easy cut”
for local councils.
I do not know how much more loud or clear we in central Government could have made our message. Even in this climate, we are ring-fencing £28 million for VAWG services and £10 million from the Ministry of Justice for rape crisis support centres. We are funding independent domestic violence adviser posts, including one in the hon. Lady’s home patch in Brighton and Hove. We are also funding Rise. Where we can provide funding, we are, although circumstances are difficult. We have done so expressly to send the message that violence against women is a priority and should not be vulnerable to cuts from local authorities, although we know that that is happening. Local areas are best placed to make local decisions, but we have tried and are trying to say to councils—I hope that they read today’s Hansard—“Do not cut these vital services.”
Lynne Featherstone
I will give way to the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) and the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt), but briefly, because I want to answer the questions asked by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion.
Karl MᶜCartney
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion on securing this debate and on how she delivered her speech. Is the Minister aware that of every three victims of partner abuse, two are female and one male? Is she concerned that successive Governments have placed all domestic abuse policy under an overarching violence against women and girls strategy? It means that men suffering domestic or sexual abuse are second-class victims. Effectively, it is an example of institutional sexism. Does she believe that domestic abuse must be—
Lynne Featherstone
I assure the hon. Gentleman that men are part of our strategy and funding. I will take a quick intervention from the hon. Member for Wells, but I want to answer the questions asked by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion.
Tessa Munt
The problem is particularly acute in rural areas where there are serious stresses. I am in contact with the Farm Crisis Network, which is aware that people in isolated situations also face domestic violence, and there is practically no possibility that they can get to a rape crisis centre, which might be 25 miles away. Does the Minister have any thoughts on that?
Lynne Featherstone
I thank the hon. Lady for making that point.
I agree with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion that prevention, which is one of the four key planks of our strategy, is extremely important. I assure her that my Department and I will bring as much pressure to bear as possible in discussions for the Department for Education to get a shift on with its consultation on personal, social and health education, which just finished and will be published in November. We regard it as vital, although we do not necessarily regard it as vital that it be statutory. We await the results of the consultation. I agree that young people’s attitudes and behaviour are vital, and that teachers need training in order to intervene successfully.
Lynne Featherstone
I am not taking any more interventions.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion mentioned the teenage relationship abuse campaign. It is one area on which we are spending money. The NSPCC research that she discussed is shocking. The abuse that teenagers seem to accept as normal—they think that it is okay to be treated like that—is the most frightening aspect. I do not know whether she has seen the films from the abuse campaign, but they are incredibly powerful and successful. The site has received more than 75,000 visits. It is not just about the film and the campaign; the purpose is to signpost young people towards help.
Lynne Featherstone
I will not. I am keen to answer the hon. Lady’s points, as it is her debate.
The hon. Lady asked me about my role of international champion in tackling violence against women and girls. The other half of that is policy coherence across Whitehall; it is in the job title. I assure her that when I came into the post in December, the first thing that I did was engage across Whitehall. Clearly, I will not be effective on my own in tackling worldwide violence against women and girls, unless I find a multiplier for the work that I am doing. I have done so, and have developed numerous messages on women and on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. Travelling Ministers have agreed to take those messages to international meetings and raise them wherever they go. The issue at the moment is finding out who is going where and when, but it is an important step. I reassure the hon. Lady that I have nothing but support from the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development. They are absolutely committed to the human rights agenda, and I argue that equal rights are human rights.
Caroline Lucas
While we are on the role of the overseas champion, will the Minister clarify whether she has a budget for any part of that work?
Lynne Featherstone
I do, and a little bit of help, although not as much as I would like. I have been to India and Nepal. I am working at three levels on such trips. I cannot go gallivanting across the world; I have a limited budget, and it is a matter of where I can get maximum traction on the issue. For example, in India, I met with the India Women’s Press Corps, which carried messages about gender-based violence across India and into every publication. I am trying to maximise bang for buck. I am meeting at the ministerial and permanent secretary level as well as in civil society. I am also visiting projects involving women in rural villages. I am going to Brussels on Tuesday to carry some of those issues forward, including LGBT issues. My eyes are on Afghanistan at the moment, as well as on the Arab spring, which I want to be a feminist summer, as I am sure the hon. Lady does.
The hon. Lady asked about immigration changes. No one with a minor conviction has been or will ever be denied their stay in this country, but neither do the Government think that it is right for different rules to apply if there is a conviction. On legal aid, we are keeping legal aid for victims in private family law cases where domestic violence is a feature, and we have not sought to change the accepted definition of domestic violence. We are including all forms of domestic violence, physical and mental, in legal aid criteria.
The hon. Lady mentioned forced marriage, which has been in the news recently. The Prime Minister has made it a priority, and we will consult on whether it should become a criminal offence in its own right. I am keen that we take evidence, for example from the women involved in the 257 forced marriage protection orders taken out under civil orders. We should ask those women whether they would have come forward had forced marriage been a criminal offence. In my view, the only reason not to make it an offence is that doing so might prohibit people from coming forward, which would undermine the benefits of sending a message that it is serious enough to be criminal.
I cite the issue of female genital mutilation, which is a criminal offence. The Opposition ask me every time we have oral questions whether there have been any prosecutions. There have not, either under the Labour Government or during the year and a half that we have been in government, because it is difficult to get evidence and make people come forward. I am keen that whatever we do should promote the best result in dealing with forced marriage. We know that there is great pressure, and the law may well change. The Prime Minister has announced that we will criminalise breaches of civil orders in the interim while we consult on the matter. However, I am not keen on messages; I am keen on getting it right. That is more important.
We as a Government have moved forward proactively. We have introduced domestic homicide reviews and pilots on domestic violence protection orders. If they prove successful, we will roll them out. We have extended the Sojourner project and will find a long-term solution. We are fast-tracking asylum applications for those in refuges who, due to their asylum status, have no recourse to public funds. I hope that hon. Members agree that we are on the right path to making society a better and safer place where women and girls do not have to live in fear of violence or lack support when they need it. These are tough times, but we are doing our very best.
Commonwealth Partners (Resources and Co-operation)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. The subject of this debate is sharing resources and co-operation with Commonwealth partners, which I feel passionate about. I do not think that, in recent years, this country has necessarily put the sort of emphasis that we should have on our relationship with our Commonwealth partners, so I would like a response from the Minister.
It is important to recognise what the Commonwealth is and the important role that it plays around the world, especially in our own country. It is made up of 54 sovereign nations and contains 31% of the global population—about 2 billion people—more than half of whom are 25 or under, so the Commonwealth and its population really are the future. It contains the world’s largest, smallest, richest and poorest countries, and its members span six continents and oceans, from Africa, Asia, the Americas and, of course, Europe. There are 44 Commonwealth countries in the G77, which will be an increasingly important body, and five in the G20—Australia, Canada, India, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Nineteen of the 39 African Union members are from the Commonwealth. Similarly, 10 nations in the Pacific Islands Forum are Commonwealth nations. Indeed, even two countries in the European Union—Malta and ourselves—are members of the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth is also a massive trade body, with $3 trillion of trade taking place within it each year. We hear a lot about our trading relationship within Europe, but considering the fact that the Commonwealth includes economies such as India’s, it is clear that the possibilities for trade growth within the Commonwealth are massive.
Commonwealth countries comprise a third of the destinations for our exports. When both trading partners are Commonwealth members, the value of trade is likely to be a third to half more than when one or both are non-Commonwealth. Indeed, five of the top 10 countries in which to do business are Commonwealth countries. As a body, the Commonwealth might be rooted in history, but its best potential lies in the future.
Don McKinnon, a former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, has said:
“One of the standard misconceptions about the Commonwealth is that it is merely a ‘relic of the Empire’... The truth is that the Commonwealth is a unique organization, which provides an international forum where each member country can have its voice heard and increase its weight in world affairs. It is a family of nations, whose members share not only a common identity, but common values and a common sense of purpose.”
I would argue that it also shares a common future.
The Commonwealth has shifting focuses—from foreign affairs, particularly the promotion of democracy and human rights, to science and technology, and the role of women, which has been its focus this year—and it plays a vital role in education. I know from my former profession as a teacher that Commonwealth teachers and students are involved in strong education programmes and links. It is to be regretted, however, that Commonwealth citizens who come to this country are forced to pay fees to study in UK universities that European Union citizens do not.
We get all that from the Commonwealth for just 20p per citizen a year, as opposed to the £54 a year it costs us to be a member of the European Union. I promise to move on from the EU, but there has been a perception in recent years—this was certainly the perception in many of our Commonwealth partner nations—that when we joined the EU, we in some ways turned our back on the Commonwealth. I pay tribute to the Government, particularly the Foreign Secretary, who in recent months has made it clear that the Commonwealth is very much a part, and an increasingly important one, of our foreign policy as we progress. That should not be viewed as an EU-versus-Commonwealth argument, but it is clear that, when we entered the EU, there was a perception that in some way we left behind the Commonwealth. I have my own view on the EU, but we need not get into that today.
The Commonwealth has a huge role to play in aid and development overseas. Although that is not strictly part of the Minister’s portfolio, it is important that we refresh ourselves with some of the relevant statistics. India provides about £7 million a year to 19 African members. Indeed, Australia has recently increased its commitment to Commonwealth countries in Africa, which is something to which the UK Government are also committed.
I mentioned trade briefly in my introductory remarks. The Commonwealth is an incredibly important player in trade internationally. It is important that we as a Government demonstrate that, while our trading relationship with the EU is important, there are huge opportunities available to us in the Commonwealth, which is, in itself, collectively responsible for more than 20% of world trade, about 20% of investment, and approximately 20% of the world’s gross domestic product. Between them, Commonwealth nations imported some $2.3 trillion-worth of goods and exported $2.1 trillion-worth in 2008 alone. We should promote intra-Commonwealth trade and ensure that the Commonwealth plays a key role in new international markets, particularly considering the emergence of economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America. India will be an economic and democratic powerhouse. It is in the Commonwealth, so we have links and relationships, and could be making so much more of them.
Turning to the Minister’s responsibilities, the greatest potential for growth might lie in foreign policy and the Commonwealth’s soft power. I hope to hear from him what the UK’s vision is for the Commonwealth and any common foreign policy aims. I suppose that the advantage of a common foreign policy agenda in the Commonwealth is that that does not come through diktat, as might be true of other organisations. It is about coming together and sharing broad aims and principles, and working towards them. Moreover, there is no infringement on any nation’s sovereignty.
I and many others have said that the Commonwealth embodies the diversity of race, ethnicity, religion, political institutions and liberalism that characterises the reality of globalisation. Opportunities are available. By working together, we could have a major impact on international affairs and developmental issues in particular, which is something to which the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting reaffirmed its commitment.
I want to press the Minister on the Government’s vision for the future of the Commonwealth. I have mentioned sharing resources. Discussions have taken place between other Commonwealth countries—perhaps we have been involved in some of them—about this country’s massive network of overseas missions and foreign embassies. The UK alone has, I think, more than 300 foreign missions. Canada, which is a country with which I am acquainted, has more than 260. That massive international Commonwealth network offers us huge potential, particularly at a time of fiscal restraint, when we are making tough decisions about our overseas missions. In this country, we do not necessarily always get the sense of the importance of the Commonwealth that we get when we visit other Commonwealth countries. A Canadian passport states, as clear as day, that if the passport holder needs help overseas they should head to a Canadian embassy or, if none exists, to a British embassy. There is the potential for us to share some of our resources for foreign missions with like-minded nations that are also making tough fiscal decisions.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend and near geographical neighbour on the subject of his debate. He has touched on a few Commonwealth issues that have chimed with me. For example, he just mentioned passports. Through my role with the Sir Keith Park memorial campaign, I am aware that many people from New Zealand, South Africa and other countries that are part of the Commonwealth and that helped us during the second world war—such countries feel an affinity to our nation—think that the changes made to visa rules in recent years under the previous Labour Government have not treated them very well. Obviously, I hope he agrees that it is time to put back what they have given us over the years and to treat them in the way that fellow Commonwealth members should be treated.
Andrew Percy
I thank my hon. Friend and next-door-but-one or two neighbour—anyway, he is a fellow Lincolnshire Member—for that intervention.
When I return to the United Kingdom, I am offended that people are pushed along through the European Union channel. Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Germans and French people are able to walk through those channels, but our own brethren from Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries are made to feel very much like foreigners. Of course, Commonwealth citizens are not foreigners when they come to this country, nor are we foreigners when we visit Commonwealth countries. That is not something I was going to raise with the Minister, but it is a good point that I hope will be heard by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and as my hon. Friend says, it is about time that we treated those fellow Commonwealth citizens with dignity and respect. We should at least put them on an equal footing with other citizens.
Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. We have mentioned the point about passport control. Is it not also right that, with the Queen’s forthcoming diamond jubilee, this is the perfect opportunity for us to reassert our relationship with Commonwealth countries, particularly in terms of economic resources and co-operation?
Andrew Percy
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. The diamond jubilee next year is an absolutely fantastic opportunity for us to show that.
The Commonwealth is rooted in history, but it is also about the future. Let us consider the statistics on the percentage of the world’s population, particularly young people, and on international trade, investment and where those emerging markets are. Let us park what is happening in the eurozone and the collapse of European economies and look to where the future is. The future is in those markets and in those regions of the world where the Commonwealth has links, both historical and actual, that no other organisation or international body has, with the possible exception of the United Nations, although that is variable. There is a chance for the Government to restate their absolute commitment to the Commonwealth.
In the two or three minutes remaining, I shall put my questions to the Minister. I apologise for not being able to send him my questions in advance, but I ended up putting this information together at a late stage because of various clashes. What is the Government’s vision for the Commonwealth? What progress has been made on the Foreign Secretary’s 2010 statement that the FCO would
“lead a co-ordinated cross Whitehall approach to help the Commonwealth achieve its potential and which underlines the United Kingdom’s commitment to this unique global organisation”?
I would like to get a sense from the Government of what areas of policy co-operation they feel could best help to promote the values of the Commonwealth and those elements of economic development and trade that are so important. Given the fiscal pressures on the United Kingdom and other countries, has the FCO yet considered sharing foreign missions and other resources internationally with our Commonwealth partners? The research paper “UK Defence and Security Policy: A New Approach?”, published in January, contains the following Government quote:
“We want to strengthen the Commonwealth as a focus for promoting democratic values and development”.
We would all agree with that and I hope to hear the Minister’s view on achieving it.
As my hon. Friends said in their interventions, there is the potential for the Commonwealth to move forward and be one of the most important bodies internationally during the next few decades, particularly given the development taking place there. While bearing in mind the United Kingdom’s relationship with Europe, its transatlantic relationships and so on, we need to ensure that at the heart of policy making is a commitment to working to improve and further develop Commonwealth relationships. The previous Government did not seem to pay much attention to the Commonwealth—the fact that no Opposition Members are here perhaps suggests that that is still the case—but this Government think differently. I hope that the Minister will take on board some of my points. I look forward to his response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) on securing the opportunity to discuss this issue and pay tribute to him for his excellent speech. I will do my best to answer the questions that he posed. I am also grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Erewash (Jessica Lee) and for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) for their interventions. The debate has shown that there is a great deal of support and interest in the Commonwealth in Parliament.
It is important to note that enduring historical links form the basis of the strong bonds that join Commonwealth countries together and that, even though those historical links have roots in the 19th century, they form one of the platforms that is most suited to the world of the 21st century. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole pointed out, the UK has upgraded its relationship with the Commonwealth substantially. Under this Government, we now have a Minister for the Commonwealth, who has firmly put the “C” back into the FCO. I thank my hon. Friend for the praise that he gave to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary; he feels equally strongly about the matter.
We are working with member states to help the organisation to realise its full potential to become a stronger force for promoting democratic values, development and prosperity, and trade. Before I comment on the specific issues raised, let me put the Government’s relations with the Commonwealth into context. We look to the Commonwealth as a key multilateral organisation, a ready-made network and an ideal platform for future co-operation in a rapidly changing global landscape. As the Prime Minister has said, Britain’s active membership of the Commonwealth is at the heart of our foreign policy. It is in the UK’s interests to be part of a strengthened Commonwealth, as it has a membership that includes many of the fastest growing and most technologically advanced economies in the world.
The Commonwealth already contributes significantly to international affairs, brokering agreements between African neighbours and calming tensions in fragile states during contested elections. It also provides a forum for smaller nations who may feel that their voices are lost in larger multilateral structures. I particularly point out the Commonwealth’s role in providing election monitors. So far this year, it has done so in Nigeria, Zambia and, indeed, will do so in the forthcoming elections in Cameroon. Commonwealth observers have been very much part of different observer and monitoring teams in those countries. They are respected and are acceptable to host countries. The Commonwealth is made up not just of the Governments of its member states, but of a multitude of non-governmental and civil society organisations and networks, which contribute, as the secretary-general of the organisation said,
“to the great global good”.
Turning to the issues discussed today, we enjoy a long history of mutual support among Commonwealth countries. On the consular side, which my hon. Friend mentioned, during the Libya crisis, in the space of a few days, the UK evacuated more than 800 UK nationals and more than 1,000 other nationals from more than 50 countries, many of which were Commonwealth countries.
During normal times, Commonwealth nationals in difficulty in non-Commonwealth countries where they do not have any diplomatic or consular representation of their own may turn to any other Commonwealth embassy for consular assistance. So where a Commonwealth national does not have representation in a non-Commonwealth country, our embassies may provide first response assistance. Once British consular staff have provided initial assistance by contacting someone who is detained or hospitalised, they will look to hand over responsibility to the individual’s nearest embassy to provide support. With some countries, notably Australia, those informal arrangements bring significant benefits to British nationals, particularly in the Pacific region where Australia’s diplomatic network is extensive.
When a country has been suspended from the Councils of the Commonwealth, we may still be able to provide consular assistance to its citizens. That is particularly so if the suspension was not aimed at ordinary citizens of the country. I refer particularly to Zimbabwe, which left the Commonwealth before it was suspended, where our dispute was not with the country’s citizens, but with the people running the country.
Let me make it clear that the UK can take no responsibility for other Commonwealth citizens in Commonwealth countries. In those circumstances, unrepresented Commonwealth citizens can turn to the host Commonwealth Government for assistance. We would expect the Commonwealth country concerned to make other arrangements if the host Government do not accept their responsibility towards unrepresented Commonwealth nationals.
On visas, under an unwritten convention agreed at a previous Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, UK visa issuing posts in non-Commonwealth countries issue visas on behalf of Commonwealth countries. That is obviously good news. The convention does not apply where a Commonwealth country either has a visa issuing mission established in that country, or has special arrangements. Commonwealth partners for whom the UK issues visas vary from post to post and that reflects demand. For example, India is one of the biggest beneficiaries of that service, with more than 100 UK posts issuing visas on its behalf.
I take on board what my hon. Friend said about immigration controls and ports of entry. In some ways, it irks all of us that we do not even have a UK channel coming into our own country; it is an EU channel. People have asked me whether it would be better to have a channel for citizens of countries where the Queen is head of state, which would include the overseas territories, the realms and a number of Commonwealth countries. That is not just in the hands of the Foreign Office, but my hon. Friend has made his point, and we will take it on board and look at it.
Our embassies and our representation abroad are very important. I will just correct my hon. Friend on one point. We have 192 missions around the world. I wish we did have the number that he gave. The Government have extended the network—in fact, we have opened new embassies; the previous Government closed embassies—in Africa in particular. We are reopening our embassy in Madagascar. We are reopening our embassy in Abidjan. We will reopen our embassy in Somalia as soon as the security situation allows, and we have opened a new embassy in Juba, in South Sudan, a country that has applied for membership of the Commonwealth. We are reinforcing a number of our missions in African countries that are Commonwealth countries. I am sure that my hon. Friend approves of that.
In seeking to manage the Foreign and Commonwealth Office overseas estate and to deliver the best possible value for money, the Government always consider whether there is a sound business case for co-location. That might be as part of a drive towards closer working relations between the FCO and other Government Departments that are represented overseas—for example, operating from the same platform and sharing common services. We already look at co-locating with other countries’ representations, including those from various Commonwealth countries. In every case, our approach is the same: to ensure that we achieve the best possible combination of operational capability, value for money, and the safety and security of those working for the British Government overseas.
I assure my hon. Friend that very often we look to Commonwealth countries to form such a partnership. We are building partnerships with our Commonwealth partners on this issue where it makes sense for us to do so. For example, our high commission in Bamako is co-located with the Canadian representation, and we also sub-let space to the Canadians in Baghdad. We allow New Zealand to share our embassy facilities in Kabul. We are actively exploring other opportunities that may make a sound business case and offer value for money for Her Majesty’s Government.
The UK also shares embassy facilities with non-Commonwealth partners where it meets our requirements. Some of these partnerships include co-locating embassies with other countries. For example, when I was in Tanzania, I went to Dar es Salaam, where our high commission sub-lets space to the Dutch and the Germans. That makes sense, and there is absolutely no reason at all, where we build a new high commission or new embassy, not to sub-let space to our Commonwealth friends. In fact, I can think of one African country where we are looking at a new build and are actively discussing that option with a number of our key Commonwealth partners. I assure my hon. Friend that we are very much on the case.
I would like to say something about the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, and hope that this part of the speech will also answer some of the questions posed by my hon. Friend. I would like to conclude by informing the House of the UK’s aims for the CHOGM in Perth later this month. At this meeting, Heads will have a chance to consider the recommendations of the Eminent Persons Group, to examine the findings of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group review, and to discuss some of the complex global challenges that we all face. I pay tribute to the work done by the EPG. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) serves on that group in a very distinguished capacity. The group’s report is excellent and I commend it to my hon. Friend.
The EPG’s recommendations, and those set out in the CMAG review, answer some of the points that my hon. Friend mentioned with regard to his vision of a common Commonwealth foreign policy. I do not think that we will go quite as far as he would like to go, but there are a number of suggestions in those two reports that would certainly please him and which we can regard as very positive. The EPG report also contains important recommendations on modernisation and we strongly support that part of its work. Its emphasis on democracy, development and good governance in the Commonwealth will help to strengthen the organisation and focus its work on those core values, particularly where it can really make a difference. It offers an important opportunity to shape the future role of the Commonwealth, a role that will have more impact on our networked world.
We want a strengthened Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group that protects our values, but also offers encouragement to those facing challenges to democratic development. The Commonwealth is ideally placed to tackle the global issues facing us today, not least in the current economic downturn. As my hon. Friend pointed out, the membership includes many of the great markets of today and tomorrow. The middle class in the Commonwealth has expanded by nearly 1 billion in the past 20 years, and over $3 trillion worth of trade happens every year in the Commonwealth. Its importance in the world trading community is huge; it is vital to the recovery that western economies are going to make, largely through an export-led drive. We want the Commonwealth to lift the prosperity of all its members through increased free and fair trade. More democracy means greater confidence in investment conditions and in creating the environment for business to flourish, leading to more jobs and greater prosperity.
As I said in my speech to the Royal Commonwealth Society last month, the Commonwealth can also play a helpful role in tackling climate change. The diversity of our economies means that we hold a wide pool of solutions, from governance structures to policies. A united position on climate change at CHOGM would send a strong signal to the international community ahead of the UN climate conference in Durban in November.
On the drive to secure a binding world deal on climate change, most of the countries at the ambitious end of the spectrum are Commonwealth countries. COP 17 in Durban is the African Conference of the Parties. I have been impressed by the extent to which a number of key Commonwealth partners have really engaged with this agenda, not just looking to support the UK’s ambitions for a binding global treaty, but looking at some other areas of crucial importance such as mitigation and adaptation, the forestry agenda and the crucial boost we need to give to renewable technology and renewable transmission. As we push hard the agenda of low carbon and high growth, that has a resonance in a lot of Commonwealth countries. They see that they can bypass the stage from early development, miss out on some of the polluting, high-emitting technologies that we have in the west and go straight to the more environmentally friendly green technologies, not just for their power solutions but for many of their other requirements. That is an exciting agenda and we have the support of those countries.
In conclusion, the UK Government are committed to reinvigorating the Commonwealth. We want to strengthen it as a focus for development, democracy and prosperity. My hon. Friend said that he was going to put the “C” back into the FCO. This is work in progress, but we are absolutely determined to keep up the pressure. I am grateful to him, because it is knowledge and expertise from parliamentarians such as him that will help us with that agenda.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Workplace Rights and Enforcement
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)
I announced to the House in December 2010 that the Government would undertake a review of workplace rights and enforcement to establish the scope to streamline them and make them more effective. The terms of reference for the review were lodged in the parliamentary Library in January this year. In looking at this complex architecture it is clear that we first need to ask a number of questions as part of the red tape challenge, which launched its spotlight on employment law on 3 October 2011. I draw the House’s attention to the discussion paper, “Flexible, effective, fair: Promoting economic growth through a strong and efficient labour market” published on this date, in which we present some of our initial findings and set out the strategic questions for the red tape challenge spotlight period.
Our initial assessment is that there is significant fragmentation within the enforcement landscape, but this is largely as a consequence of the underpinning regulations. There is no common rationale for determining those rights that are Government enforced and those that are enforced through tribunals. There is no single overarching compliance strategy for Government enforcement of workplace rights, nor is there a mechanism for reviewing whether the risk associated with particular workplace rights still warrants Government enforcement. The different enforcement bodies have a range of powers and penalties at their disposal, including naming, civil penalties, criminal prosecution, licence revocation and prohibition for a defined period of time. These varying powers are also a consequence of differences in the underpinning regulations.
The creation of the pay and work rights helpline has done much to align the work of the different agencies and the impact of the fragmentation of the enforcement activity has not significantly impacted the experience of those workers seeking redress through the helpline. However, those furthest from the labour market often do not trust Government bodies to act on their behalf, perhaps as a consequence of cultural and historical experiences in other countries, or for fear of personal consequences. It is essential that the most vulnerable workers have confidence in their ability to access the protection they need and we are keen to learn lessons from unions and community groups who have a long track record in reaching these individuals.
While all the enforcement bodies have made significant efficiency savings, there is duplication of activity between the different enforcement bodies. Each of the bodies, for example, has separate corporate and management functions, intelligence assessment and risk evaluation functions. When carrying out enforcement inspections, the different enforcement bodies often look at the same evidence (such as contracts/statements of particulars, pay and work time records) and ask the same questions of employers or agencies, but there remain some legal barriers that prevent enforcement bodies from co-operating with each other, and with other regulatory bodies.
In order for us to be able to make progress on reviewing Government enforcement, I believe that we must review the underpinning regulations as part of the red tape challenge, including whether a lighter-touch enforcement regime could be implemented where rights are currently enforced by Government. In parallel to this work the Government will continue to consider potential enforcement models, including whether there could be benefits from establishing a fair employment agency to protect the rights of the most vulnerable. I will report back to the House again on progress in the spring.
Libya (Operation Ellamy)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
In a written statement on 23 June 2011, Official Report, column 24WS, I informed the House that the costs of Operation Ellamy—the United Kingdom’s contribution to coalition operations in support of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973—for the six months from mid-March to mid-September were estimated to be £120 million. I can now update this estimate.
The revised figure for the whole operation, from mid-March to mid-December, is £160 million. Our estimate of the cost of replenishing munitions used in Libya remains £140 million. As previously announced, the additional costs incurred by the Ministry of Defence on Operation Ellamy will be borne by the reserve, and will be in addition to the core defence budget.
Offshore Energy Strategic Environmental Assessment
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)
I am today announcing the outcome of the offshore energy strategic environmental assessment (OESEA2) regarding future offshore energy developments.
In 2009, DECC completed a strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of a draft plan/programme to hold further rounds of offshore leasing for wind and offshore oil and gas licensing in United Kingdom waters (OESEA). Then in 2010, DECC undertook an exercise to update and extend the scope of the OESEA environmental report (OESEA2) and issue it for consultation to enable further licensing/leasing for offshore energy (oil and gas, gas storage including carbon dioxide transport and storage as part of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and offshore marine renewables, including wind, wave and tidal.
The renewable energy elements of the draft plan/programme cover parts of the UK renewable energy zone and the territorial waters of England and Wales; for hydrocarbon gas and carbon dioxide storage it applies to UK waters (territorial waters and the UK gas importation and storage zone); and for hydrocarbon exploration and production it applies to all UK waters.
A 12-week public consultation on the OESEA2 environmental report closed on 12 May 2011. All responses received on the draft plan/programme and the environmental report have been considered by DECC and a post consultation report for the offshore energy SEA has been prepared and placed on the SEA website (www.offshore-sea.org.uk). This summarises consultee comments and DECC responses to them, and presents a final list of recommendations.
In the light of the final recommendations set out in the post-consultation report, the Department concludes that there are no overriding environmental considerations to prevent the achievement of our draft plan/programme of leasing offshore wind, wave and tidal, licensing/leasing for seaward oil and gas rounds, hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide storage, provided appropriate measures are implemented that prevent, reduce and offset significant adverse impacts on the environment and other users of the sea.
In all cases, the relevant competent authority should undertake any appropriate assessments(s) prior to awarding licences or leases under the rounds, where screening shows this to be necessary. This is to meet the requirements of EU Council Directive 79/409 EEC on “the conservation of wild birds” and Council Directive 92/43/EEC on “the conservation of natural habitats and wild fauna and flora”, and UK implementing regulations.
DECC will now make preparations to proceed for a further round—the 27th—of offshore licensing for oil and gas. This is expected to be launched in early 2012 and a further announcement will be made on the timing of the round.
DECC and Scottish Ministers (where appropriate) are now also in a position to consider applications for carbon dioxide storage licences, and to issue those licences, and subsequently to issue storage permits, where the applications meet regulatory requirements.
OESEA2 paves the way for future leasing rounds for marine (wave and tidal) energy. It allows for an installed capacity of up to 33GW of offshore wind—subject to mitigation measures. This is in excess of the central range set out in the UK renewable energy roadmap, which indicates that up to 18GW of offshore wind could be deployed by 2020.
The environmental report highlights that siting and consenting processes for offshore renewable energy developments must remain flexible to allow for technological innovation, including any mitigation measures.
Somali Piracy (Funding Regional Maritime Capacity-Building Projects)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)
I would like to inform the House that the Government have decided to fund a package of counter-piracy projects, building on support provided in 2010-11. This support provides concrete evidence of this Government’s determination to deliver a comprehensive range of action in response to the threat from piracy, complementing the robust action being taken by the Royal Navy at sea.
The projects support court and prison capacity building in Mauritius, the Seychelles, Tanzania and Somalia delivered through the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (£2.25 million); a maritime security sector needs assessment planning mission in Somalia, delivered through the UN Development Programme (£200,000); maritime security co-ordination offices in Somalia, delivered through the UN Political Office for Somalia, and including the Somali regions (£120,000); and projects supporting community engagement and economic development in coastal areas of Somalia, developed with UN partners in Somalia, including UNODC and UNDP (£2 million).
Licensing Hours (Queen's Diamond Jubilee)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Today I am publishing a consultation on proposals to make an order to relax licensing hours to celebrate the Queen’s diamond jubilee celebrations for the period Saturday 2 June to Tuesday 5 June 2012. The proposed order will extend licensed opening hours on Friday 1 June to l am on Saturday 2 June 2012, and on Saturday 2 June to l am on Sunday 3 June 2012, for the sale of alcohol for consumption on the premises and the provision of regulated entertainment and late night refreshment by licensed premises in England and Wales.
Section 172 of the Licensing Act 2003 allows the Secretary of State to make an order relaxing opening hours for licensed premises to mark occasions of “exceptional international, national or local significance”. A “licensing hours order” overrides existing opening hours in licensed premises, that is, any premises with a premises licence or club premises certificate, and can apply to a period of up to four days. An order may apply to all licensed premises in England and Wales, or be restricted to premises in one or more specified areas. It is also possible to impose different opening hours on different days during the relaxation period and to allow different licensing hours for different licensable activities.
The Government consider that, as the Queen’s diamond jubilee is an occasion for national celebration, licensing hours should be relaxed in all licensed premises in England and Wales. However, we are mindful that late night drinking can lead to crime and disorder and public nuisance. On this basis, we are proposing a modest relaxation of licensing hours until l am on each of two days and intend to restrict the order to the sale of alcohol in pubs, clubs and anywhere else where alcohol is consumed on the premises and to regulated entertainment such as live and recorded music, dancing, plays and films. We are also limiting the order to the nights of Friday 1 June and Saturday 2 June 2012, as these are the days when people are most likely to want to celebrate.
The consultation will be published today (Wednesday 12 October) on the Home Office website at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/consultations. A copy has also been placed in the House Library.
Intelligence and Security Committee Report
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
The annual report of the Intelligence and Security Committee was laid before Parliament on 13 July 2011 (Cm. 8114). The Government have considered the Committee’s many useful conclusions and recommendations, I have today laid the Government’s response to this report before the House (Cm. 8168).
Copies of the response have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Grand Committee
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Arrangement of Business
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester)
My Lords, I remind noble Lords that the Motion before us will be that the Grand Committee do consider the statutory instrument or national policy statement in question. I should perhaps make it clear that the Committee is not being invited to agree or disagree to the negative instrument or to approve the policy statement. In either case, further proceedings in the Chamber will need to be tabled for further action to ensue. If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Housing Benefit (Amendment) Regulations 2011
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
That the Grand Committee report to the House that it has considered the Housing Benefit (Amendment) Regulations 2011.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, it is my pleasure to move the Motion standing in my name. I am grateful for the Chairman’s guidance about what we are doing today, which is exactly what I was intending.
The policy that the statutory instrument enshrines was first promulgated in the October 2010 comprehensive spending review, since when quite a lot has happened. Actually, it is my impression that the pressure group community and those in the wider world who follow these things actually think that some of these regulations are already in place. Because there was a nine-month transitional period, which was welcome, people perhaps do not recognise that the scheme enshrined in these regulations will not be implemented until January next year. Therefore, I think that it is apposite for colleagues to pause and reflect, and to tax the ministerial Front Bench with some questions that arise naturally from the proposed changes.
The first thing to say is that the economic circumstances have changed. I am certainly seized of the importance of deficit reduction, and it was obviously right of the incoming Government in 2010 to act quickly to make the savings that they have. You can have arguments about the degree, pace and scale of some of the changes, but I certainly think that, given the economic environment in which we now find ourselves and given the housing market changes that we have seen, particularly in the private rented sector, it is right to pause and look at the regulations carefully.
As colleagues will know, because it is clear from the regulations, housing benefit for single people under 25 who are in the private rented sector is currently restricted to paying for a single room in shared accommodation, rather than a self-contained, one-bedroom property. I remember well that quite a controversy surrounded the introduction of the original shared-accommodation rules in 1996, and it has been my sense that, ever since, the department has been hankering after the opportunity to make a change of this kind. However, there are cogent reasons for stopping and reflecting on why we need to think carefully about this.
First, it is now clear that the shared-accommodation rate tends to be significantly lower than the one-bedroom rate. In checking some of the facts in preparation for this debate, I was taken aback by the scale of some of the proposed changes. Indeed, in some areas recipients will see their benefit entitlement more than halved if their circumstances are caught by the proposals in these regulations. For some people, this will mean a significant change in January 2012.
Secondly, a worrying, but perhaps not surprising, degree of concern has been expressed on a number of fronts, which I think the Committee will want to reflect upon carefully. The University of York did an important survey that repays careful study called Unfair Shares. It came to the conclusion that this was potentially the most damaging housing benefit cut in terms of potentially promoting additional homelessness. The University of York is an experienced hand in these matters and its opinion should be taken seriously.
In addition, the Social Security Advisory Committee advised the Government that they should not proceed with these regulations and made suggestions to the Government about what they would need to do if they proceeded with them. The Government, I am pleased to say, came up with two additional exemptions and they are very welcome. I will come back to exemptions in a moment but I do not want to lose the point that the Social Security Advisory Committee, after mature reflection, thought that these regulations should not be proceeded with. That should give us pause for thought.
The Merits Committee, which does valuable work looking at the regulations as they come before us in this House, came to the conclusion that there were significant uncertainties about the wider consequences of these regulations. It went on to mention that it was uncertain about where any second-order costs would fall—for example, the cost of providing emergency re-housing for individuals who cannot find a room within the housing benefit budget that they are set. The Merits Committee was encouraging Members to look carefully at these regulations, and that is what we are doing this afternoon.
The pressure group Crisis did a serious piece of work in a survey. It judged that these regulations were going to cause major problems and increases in homelessness and rough sleeping. Crisis knows a great deal about that client group and their needs and its conclusions need to be respected too. We are in a situation where there is continuing and increasing concern because of the changes in the private rental market and the economy that we are now facing. These regulations therefore need some careful thought.
I turn to the exemptions. The two new exemptions are welcome but, because they deal with homelessness and people who have spent more than three months in supported accommodation and therefore are on the road out of rough sleeping and matters of that kind. By definition rough sleepers who do not have the three-month qualification will not be exempt and that is a concern. The ex-offenders’ extension of an exemption is welcome but, again, ex-offenders who are not considered to be a risk do not qualify for the exemption and that is a concern. People who have disabilities but do not qualify for the higher rates of DLA will not get the exemption that already exists under the shared accommodation rate exemptions, and that is a concern. Two obvious other groups that occurred to me are pregnant women, who I think should be the subject of an exemption under these regulations, and non-resident parents, whom I want to come back to briefly in a moment.
My third point is the lack of available accommodation. That is getting worse, for the reasons that I explained—the private rental sector is getting tighter and tighter. Households of multiple occupation are being much more rigorously policed by the local authorities and that is a good thing, but it means that there are fewer of them. In rural areas like the one in which I live, there is almost a complete dearth of any appropriate accommodation that would service the needs of people who would be looking for shared accommodation in rural areas, and I am sure that that is true of other parts of the United Kingdom as well. I want to tax the Minister of State with a question about what evidence he has that, when these changes are introduced, appropriate levels of accommodation will be available to people who will need to take account of it. Of course, by virtue of the fact that we are forcing more people into this marketplace, there is even more pressure on available suitable accommodation for shared occupation in future.
Of course, the Government are right to say that they have put extra money into the discretionary housing payment scheme, which is welcome. Some £190 million over the period of the comprehensive spending review is a significant sum of money, but the evidence is that it will not match the needs that will be generated, particularly by these changes.
I turn briefly to some of the problems—I hope that other colleagues will be encouraged to enter the debate and expand on them a little. My evidence is that there is an advantage to some people in sharing accommodation. In a “friendly” share, you get people’s support. If you are comfortable with your fellow inhabitants in the share, a lot can be gained and a lot of positive support can flow from that. On the other hand, in circumstances where your entry into shared accommodation is unplanned and you are working in a strange environment with people whom you do not know, that almost by definition increases stress and makes life a lot more uncomfortable. It generates questions of safety, particularly for young female claimants. It can also affect people’s ability to get to work. If they come from self-contained accommodation and go into shared accommodation where they are uncomfortable, it disrupts their state of mind to the extent that it may even affect their work patterns if they happen to be in work at the time. A general question of health and well-being therefore surrounds whether people are able to find friendly people to share with or whether they are forced into accommodation with strangers whom they do not really know and trust.
I would have been much more comfortable if we had taken the time to pilot the regulations. I do not have any recollection of whether we did so in 1996 but, given the circumstances that we find now, again in rural areas in particular, I would have been more comfortable if a little extra time had been taken to look at how the regulations might work out in practice. There are all sorts of divergences in policy provision in different social security areas. In Scotland, the policy that the Government are working towards is to give everyone an entitlement to settled accommodation by 2012. I do not know how these regulations will fit into that plan. I am not arguing that it is a good, bad or indifferent plan, but it is different and I hope that there has been proper consultation so that these regulations do not run counter to what the Government north of the border are thinking of doing.
A small but important legal point is that you can engage in a tenancy north of the border if you are 16 or 17; you cannot do that in England until you are 18. So there is the prospect in Scotland of a 16 year-old entering a shared tenancy with a much older adult, the potential risk in which is obvious for everyone to see. I would happy to see an extension of the regulations much lower down the age range to try to protect against inelegancies such as that. That is another example of how we have to treat the devolved nations of this United Kingdom with some care.
On shared accommodation for non-resident parents, I do not know how valid or strong the following legal point is, but I am advised that the right to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents could contravene Article 9.3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I do not know whether that is so, but it is certainly an argument. I should like some reassurance that a lawyer in the department has looked at that. We will discuss non-resident parents, child maintenance and child support in another Room later in the week, and for weeks and weeks—we are looking forward to that—but I make that request for information today.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, and I am grateful to him for giving us the opportunity to discuss these regulations. I shall speak briefly, which I am sure will be of great relief to the Minister.
I am very concerned about the potential implications for homelessness and rough sleeping that the noble Lord referred to, and also about the wider poverty implications, including food poverty. I have been catching up on my press cuttings while I have been away and there is information that more and more people are having to turn to charities for food. I fear that regulations such as this could exacerbate that situation. It is horrifying that in a welfare state we now have so many people turning to charity for their food needs.
Like the noble Lord, I welcome the fact that the Government have responded to some of what the Social Security Advisory Committee said with regard to exemptions, but I agree with the noble Lord that that does not go far enough. What he said about complex needs is worth exploring further. I want to draw attention particularly to some of the gender implications of the regulations, some of which the noble Lord touched on. The equality impact assessment shows that women are a minority of those affected. However, the SSAC makes it clear that there are issues here for women. It states:
“Women are specifically affected in two important ways. Pregnant single women”—
to whom the noble Lord referred—
“are restricted to the shared accommodation rate until they give birth, and face one of three undesirable situations. They can move home twice at a time when they may be financially, emotionally and physically ill-equipped to do so”—
we will be talking about the needs of pregnant women in the Welfare Reform Bill Committee tomorrow—
“into shared accommodation and back to self-contained accommodation when the baby is born. They can decide to move into shared accommodation and remain there after the birth of their child. Or they can try to make up the shortfall in their rent. The second group of women who are likely to be disadvantaged by the proposals are those escaping domestic violence, who may well find themselves having to live in insecure accommodation, putting them at risk of further abuse by their estranged partner”.
With regard to that, earlier research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showed the real concerns that younger women have about the prospect of having to share accommodation with strangers. Clearly, that is particularly the case where there has been domestic violence. It said that the prospect of having to share with older people was noted to be particularly daunting, especially for female claimants.
The Merits Committee had a subheading in its report entitled “Evidence-based Policy?”. The question mark says everything. I do not think that this is evidence-based policy-making. The Social Security Advisory Committee report, which is such a bible on these occasions, stated:
“The proposals that have been presented to us are essentially cuts to the Housing Benefit budget and we do not find the rationale for the change to be either convincing or compelling when set against the potential negative impacts. There is no evidence that these measures will improve work incentives or that those under the age of 35 have similar patterns of housing to those under the age of 25. The evidence from private landlords is that the market for private rented accommodation is buoyant, that few landlords will reduce rents as a result of these proposed measures and that many are increasingly excluding Housing Benefit claimants”.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Merits Committee states:
“DWP has offered surprisingly little evidence to demonstrate the feasibility of its proposal, in particular whether the rental sector has capacity to accommodate the change”.
Given what the Merits Committee and the Social Security Advisory Committee have said, I agree with the noble Lord that we should think very hard before introducing such regulations. I remind the Committee that the Merits Committee suggested to us that it may want to press the DWP for further information on how the policy will work in practice and on its wider consequences. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide us with that information before the regulations go ahead.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Kirkwood for tabling the take note Motion. On the face of it, the proposal to extend the age range for single people who receive local housing allowance from 25 to 34 seems entirely reasonable. I, myself, lived in shared flats or houses at that age, as I could not possibly afford a flat or house in London on my salary from the Liberal Party. However, although my fellow housemates and I tried to be careful when interviewing potential new sharers, we did not expect them to belong to particularly vulnerable groups or be on housing benefit. The only tension came when boys wanted to get girlfriends in, or vice versa.
The Government, to their credit, have, as we have heard, made two exemptions. I shall mention the exemption for homeless people who have spent more than three months in a hostel, which is particularly welcome because of the difficulty of moving those in hostel accommodation on. Here I declare an interest as patron of the Winchester Churches Nightshelter, which has an especially impressive record of moving clients on to suitable accommodation.
However, even with those two exemptions, there is a great deal of concern among all the stakeholders who were consulted about the policy. In fact, we see from the consultation outcome that none of the respondents supported the proposed changes and the majority questioned the rationale for them. The $64,000 question is whether the proposals will save the taxpayer money or cause even more to be spent by local authorities having to find extra emergency accommodation. The SSAC report answers that in clear terms. Thank goodness, I have a different sentence to cite from that quoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. The report states:
“The evidence we have seen points to this being a high risk approach to cutting costs that does not take account of potentially negative impacts on other areas of public policy and potential increases in other areas of public expenditure”.
The Government’s solution is to increase discretionary housing payments to local authorities to support those in the most vulnerable situations who do not fit the exempted categories, but the discretionary housing payments will be spread extremely thinly across a lot of housing hotspots because of the changes to the 30th percentile. Such payments can be regarded only as a temporary sticking plaster. An awful lot is being asked of this particular pot of money, which will not go very far when spread across the poorer boroughs of London, not to mention those of all the other large conurbations. In Winchester, homelessness is increasing dramatically, with evidence from letting agents suggesting that fewer than 10 per cent of properties are affordable. As I have said before, Winchester is a very expensive place in which to be poor.
As my noble friend said, are there really enough houses and flats available for multi-occupation in areas where there are likely to be jobs, particularly low-paid jobs? In a buoyant market, will landlords really be willing to reduce their rents to let properties to what could be a potentially unstable cohort of people, when landlords will have no difficulty finding tenants who will pay the market rent?
In my view, this is a worrying experiment. The Social Security Advisory Committee report states that,
“the Department knows very little about either the shared accommodation market”,
or those who live in that sector. As we have heard, that committee recommends that the Government should gather evidence as a matter of urgency with the proposals introduced gradually and evaluated. That sounds like a very good idea to me.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford
My Lords, I am very pleased to join in this debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Kirkwood. I declare an interest as chair of First Wessex Housing Group, which has a number of shared-accommodation facilities, and I am also chair designate of Housing 21.
Sadly, this is an example of government spending cutbacks whereby the broadest backs are not assuming the biggest burden—probably the reverse. Among the 62,000 people who it is thought will be affected by these changes, there are a lot of very vulnerable people. The fundamental problem is that we simply do not know how many.
I accept that this is a tough decision in very tough times, and there are a number of positives in what the Government have done. The transition period is obviously very helpful, extra money has been provided for discretionary housing payments and certain of the exemptions have been widened—although we have heard my noble friend Lord Kirkwood’s reservations on those. It is probably also true that, in these tough times and in the current climate, it is inevitable that we probably have to encourage older children to stay at home with their families. Obviously, people in the private purchase market are having to do that as well. However, one of the problems is that we are often dealing here with families of children where the family relationships have broken down.
There are a number of negatives to this change. First, as I mentioned, we simply do not know who these people are nor, as a result, do we know how they will adapt. What we do know is that there are certainly some very vulnerable groups here, as my noble friend Lord Kirkwood mentioned, including people with mental health issues and drug addiction issues, young offenders and people trying to regroup from broken marriages and broken relationships. We also simply do not know what pressures on other areas of the public purse will result from these changes.
Finally, there is a great shortage of shared accommodation in certain areas, especially in rural areas. One thing that has not been anticipated is the further market pressures that will result. For example, one of the hostels that I am familiar with is designed to encourage young people to become independent in the community and to get their own accommodation. By increasing the pressure in the marketplace from those aged between 25 and 35, we will make it much more difficult for landlords to accept people who are under 25, who are much more difficult to deal with, so landlords will go for the older people. That will mean worse problems in that market as well.
Baroness Browning
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Kirkwood for initiating this debate, because it gives me an opportunity—my noble friend the Minister will not be surprised to hear me say this—to raise the case of people on the autistic spectrum, particularly in respect of the exemptions as outlined in the order.
Reference has already been made to the fact that there are exemptions. The exemption that would particularly affect people with autism is the one applicable to people who had been able to live independently and are entitled to severe disability premium. However, severe disability premium requires people to be in receipt of the middle or higher rate of the care component of disability living allowance, a benefit which is itself under review. The regulations are due to come into force in January next year. How will this timescale fit in with those people who are currently in receipt of the middle or higher of DLA care component but who may when decisions are being made about their eligibility for exemption under these regulations suddenly find that they are no longer in receipt of DLA at all or have been downgraded to a lower rate?
I know that my noble friend has great knowledge about autism. He has taken particular care to make sure that he understands the way in which autism manifests itself. He will therefore understand, I know only too well, that somebody who has been able to achieve independent living will have been through a journey to reach that point. For somebody on the autistic spectrum to be expected to share accommodation with another person would almost certainly be traumatic. It would affect their whole demeanour and well-being. The consequences of disturbing what for people with autism is very often a rigid way of life may be serious. Getting them to the point where they can maintain independent living is achievable and we are seeing more and more of it. It is sometimes but not always done with some external support—very often, voluntary support comes from family members and others; it is not necessarily an official package of care from social services. However, we aspire as a Government and a society to get more people on the spectrum to live independently.
I am extremely concerned about the impact of these changes, and I have made available to my noble friend’s officials a letter which I received only this week from the mother of a 32 year-old man who has been living independently for three years and who is in receipt of £93.45 a week. That is income support and the lower DLA rate, so he certainly would not qualify for the exemption. At the moment he is being paid £103.56 in housing benefit and it is calculated that he will lose £43 of that when this change comes in. Forty-three pounds out of an income of £93.45 a week is a significant amount. His mother is clearly aware of these changes and what the impact will be for her son. She writes a very moving three-page letter about what she thinks might happen to him as a result, concluding,
“local authorities will have available a pot of money that they can, at their discretion, use to help people make up the shortfalls in their benefit. Knowing this, though, will condemn those with autism to months of anxiety over whether they would be successful in benefiting from this. These months of anxiety will overwhelm many. The waiting is certainly causing James untold worry”.
I note that the Merits Committee report talks about the discretionary sum and expresses some concern. In paragraph 5 on page 5 it states:
“That increase must be used to cover all calls on the discretionary budget; no additional provision has been made to address any demands arising from these changes to the SAR regulations”.
My noble friend will understand immediately my concern about the way in which this might affect those living independently with a diagnosis of autism or Asperger’s syndrome. Many will not qualify for the exemption. The disruption to their lives will not only be severe in terms of their well-being and health but will, like a pack of cards, ripple out to other services that may have been involved in providing for them. Once you destabilise them in one area of their life, everything else starts to fall down like a pack of cards. So I hope my noble friend will take a look at this mother’s letter and perhaps take another look at how we might mitigate the distress that will almost certainly be caused to this very vulnerable group of people.
Lord McAvoy
My Lords, I join the ranks of those thanking the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, for bringing this forward for discussion, to make sure that it is aired, and for taking the opportunity to try to mitigate some of the effect of the regulation. The deficit has been mentioned. The point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, that these are not the broadest backs that the pressure is falling on. The pressure is falling on these vulnerable people for an annual saving of £200 million. I believe in fiscal rectitude and I do not have any bother saving money, but with a group of people like this, whose vulnerability has been described by several colleagues, I think the deficit is the excuse for bringing out this measure. A colleague mentioned that perhaps it has been a long-term ambition of the department—not the particular individuals who happen to be here. But the consequences here are so drastic more serious consideration should have been given to pilots. I know that when a new Government come in, there is a determination not to be caught up in delays. The Government are in a hurry and they want to get things through. I have seen it happen and been part of it and I have the experience to regret some of it. I think that is what is happening here. They have been saying, “Get a decision. Get it made. Get it through”. I think it is pretty poor that people like these are in that position.
Although I have no intention of repeating the valuable comments made by colleagues, I will rely heavily on the reports produced by the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Merits Committee. The SSAC report makes a plea for delay by stating:
“We recommend that the proposals do not go ahead in their current form”.
In paragraph 23 of the Government’s response to the advisory committee’s report, after mentioning that the Government,
“does not accept the Committee’s view that the proposals are driven solely by the need to reduce the Housing Benefit budget”,
the Government claim that the changes will remove a “potential work disincentive”. Now, I have seen some daft and totally irrelevant things put into official documents—I might even have put in one or two myself—but what is a “potential work disincentive”? I do not know what that means. Perhaps the Minister could give us examples of where he imagines that might happen; it will be difficult for him to provide proof as there is very little evidence for anything in this measure. I would like to hear some examples of where this disincentive would take place.
Indeed, the Social Security Advisory Committee report states:
“On work incentives the Committee contends”—
and I think that normal life would confirm this—
“that the impact of the changes for Housing Benefit claimants already in work could result in a move to a location some distance from their place of work”.
Colleagues should be clear that, in many people’s lives, this could result in a big disruption, which should not be underestimated. A pilot would have been useful.
We are in danger of creating an itinerant population—a phrase that I have used elsewhere—who will be easily identifiable because they will be vulnerable for many reasons. As I have seen for myself, for people suffering from alcohol problems and from various degrees of mental ill health, security and permanence are very important. Moving people about in this way is not something that any British Government should be doing to part of its population.
I may be a touch cynical, but I wonder whether the reason that this particular group has been selected to bear £200 million-worth of cuts is that these people are not a very effectively organised part of the community: they are invariably not members of trade unions or interested in getting involved with trade union activity; they are not involved with community councils or politics; instead, they are on their own trying to cope with the situation in which they find themselves. Like the Government, I have no evidence for saying this, but it would be realistic to say that the percentage of these people who vote will not be too high, because not many of them will have any faith in politics—I would find it hard to argue with them when they say that. The Government would have picked an easy target for cutting £200 million, were it not for the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood.
Another interesting, and depressing, point is that, according to my reading of the Government’s response to the Social Security Advisory Committee’s report—if I am wrong, the Minister will contradict me—not one of the advisory committee’s recommendations was agreed to. Where is the listening to, or taking account of, the terrific experience of the people who serve on that committee? Not one of the committee’s recommendations was agreed to even partially. There is just a total blank.
Others will no doubt speak about their own areas, but I believe that the danger point here is likely to be the cities, where the drifters seem to congregate. For example, page 70 of the advisory committee’s report lists the number of claimants by area and the average amount lost per week. In the City of Edinburgh, 590 people, or 17 per cent of the caseload, will on average lose £37 a week. In Glasgow City—I am not a Glaswegian, but I live next to that city and know that it has many problems—800 people, or 25 per cent of the caseload, will on average lose £22 a week. In my own council area of South Lanarkshire, which does not have a big city but nevertheless includes some big towns, some 270 people, or 23 per cent of that sector of the population, will on average lose £11 a week. I know that some might say, “That’s up to them. It’s just £11 and they will manage with that”. However, as has been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, given the current situation in which utility costs and all the rest of it are rocketing up, losing £11 a week against that background of rising prices will be really difficult.
It will not make any difference to the Government, but a lot of us are worried about the availability of accommodation. Will they get accommodation? Will it be suitable? There is no evidence that the landlord sector will be able to guarantee availability of alternative accommodation. Folk will have to deal with that. They will face an upheaval in their lives plus cash losses. Collectively, we should not be proud of doing that to this sector of society. Having mentioned society, I shall finish with this statement. We are told by the Prime Minister—and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in particular—that they want to establish the big society. They say that we are all in it together. I do not see many people in society who will feel in it together with these vulnerable people.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Lord Freud)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, for providing this opportunity to discuss planned changes to housing benefit that will affect certain young people currently living in the private sector in self-contained accommodation. These changes are contained in the regulations we are debating.
The change to the shared accommodation rate was announced last October as part of the spending review in the context of reining back welfare expenditure in general and housing benefit in particular. Difficult decisions have had to be made about spending priorities. At the heart of those decisions is fairness and affordability. We need to be fair to taxpayers and mindful of the choices those not in receipt of benefits make when considering what they can afford to pay in rent and the type of accommodation they choose to live in.
The shared accommodation rate reflects local private sector rent levels of accommodation where at least one facility is shared, for example a bathroom, kitchen or living room. The current rules for under-25s avoids the situation in which those in receipt of housing benefit could afford a level of accommodation that they would not be able to maintain were they employed. It also reflects the fact that sharing accommodation is common among younger people. We want work to be people’s first choice and do not think it unreasonable to extend the application of this rate from those aged up to 25 to those aged up to 35 for those who have recourse to public funds. This will realise savings of around £200 million per annum from 2013. That does not necessarily mean that people will have to move, although it is likely that some will need to do so—they will have to make the same sorts of choices about affordability as those who are not on benefits.
Many in this age group already share. Over one-third of the 25 to 34 year-old local housing allowance claimants who are potentially affected by this measure are already choosing shared accommodation and claiming the shared rate. In this age group, 40 per cent of private renters who are not on benefits also share. The Social Security Advisory Committee put forward the view that the majority of older sharers are either professionals or mature students, but the 40 per cent figure that I just cited specifically excludes students, and our survey data indicate that there are people sharing across all types of occupations.
The recent report by the Merits Committee posed the question: if savings are to be made, why choose the age of 35? Why not go higher? Such a move would not be supported by the evidence, which shows that sharing accommodation tails off significantly after age 35. Our equality impact assessment looked at the accommodation arrangements of all single and childless adults. Less than half of 25 to 34 year-olds have their own place, and a third live with their parents. When we look at those over 35, we find that 84 per cent have their own place and that only 6 per cent live with their parents.
We realise that, for some, it is neither desirable nor appropriate to live in shared accommodation. There are already a number of exemptions from the shared accommodation rate for those in vulnerable situations, such as care leavers below the age of 22, those entitled to the severe disability premium and those who have an extra bedroom for a non-resident carer with a home elsewhere who provides overnight care. Those living in social housing and in certain types of supported accommodation are also not subject to that rate. Those exemptions will continue to apply, where appropriate, to claimants in the increased age group of 25 to 34.
Since the announcement of the measure, we have been listening to people's concerns. I and my officials have met with interested parties, and the Social Security Advisory Committee has consulted and reported on the draft regulations. We decided to introduce two further exemptions for the extended age group. Those have been welcomed by several commentators and organisations, as well as by noble Lords who have spoken today.
The first additional exemption is for those who have lived for at least three months in a specialist hostel for the homeless and, while living there, received support to resettle in the community. That exemption addresses the concerns raised by several commentators about the impact of the changes on rough sleepers—in particular, the silting up of hostel accommodation. We accept that, without that exemption, it would be difficult to secure suitable move-on accommodation for that group to help them into a more settled way of life, which could undermine our ambition to end rough sleeping.
That exemption has been targeted at people aged over 25, who are at greater risk of rough sleeping. We believe that the current exemption is well targeted at people who are ready to move on to an independent life, but those people leaving hostels will have to have undergone some support and rehabilitation. That strikes the right balance between cost and fairness. We think that many former rough sleepers will be helped by that.
My noble friend Lord Kirkwood asked about the ministerial homelessness committee, of which I am a member. It was with that ministerial hat on that we framed this support, working closely with my colleague Grant Shapps.
The second new exemption is for those ex-offenders who present a serious risk to the public and who are subject to active multi-agency management under the multi-agency public protection arrangements—MAPPA—in England and Wales or are considered to present similar risks in Scotland. That exemption covers a very small group of ex-offenders who are to be excluded on the grounds of public safety. It is not extended to all ex-offenders because many of them pose no risk to the public. Perversely, the risk is that one might provide an incentive to commit modest crime, which we would not want to encourage.
Other specific groups have been put forward as needing exemption. They include people with disabilities, those with mental health problems, those with a history of substance misuse and those seeking to maintain contact arrangements with their children. The case for those who have shared care of children is complex. We estimate that, of those who will be affected by this measure, around 10,000 have some contact with a child who lives elsewhere. Of these, it is not known how many would normally stay overnight, so the numbers are relatively low. But living in shared accommodation should not preclude both parents from playing a full part in a child’s life. Parents living in hostels or other non-mainstream accommodation will, I am sure, be striving to maintain quality relationships with their children. Ultimately, it is for individual maintenance and custody arrangements to reflect living arrangements, and it is not appropriate for the state to fund two homes for a child. To pick up the question that my noble friend Lord Kirkwood asked, I can assure him that this arrangement does not contravene Article 9 of the UN convention.
We thought long and hard about other exemptions, but the blunt answer is that our analysis suggested that it is better to rely on discretionary housing payments than on specific exemptions because of the difficulty in defining and administering them. Our belief is that the local authority is best placed to consider individual circumstances.
The point raised by my noble friend Lady Browning about the autistic is very moving. I have had a chance to read the letter sent to her from Mrs—
Baroness Browning
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, but I quite deliberately did not mention the person’s name.
Lord Freud
I muttered it. The letter was very moving and was about a particular individual.
Clearly, people on the autistic spectrum who are receiving severe disability premium are exempt from this measure. But not everyone, as my noble friend pointed out, is categorised as severely disabled. The question is: how does one best get support? Our basic view is that the local authorities are best placed to identify this group. Indeed, they have a duty to identify this group, unlike other groups. It is our view that discretionary housing payments to that group are the way to go. Clearly, it would be hugely in the interests of local authorities to make sure that happened because, as my noble friend pointed out, the ongoing costs of getting this wrong in particular cases are much larger than the DHP support. So there is a real incentive for local authorities to get this right.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I apologise for not speaking in the debate. I did not do so deliberately, because I thought that we would go through a lot of these issues tomorrow, and it would be more sensible to wait until I had heard some of the arguments addressed. One quick point for the Minister is that, by the time that we have counted up the number of referrals to the local housing allowance of £60 million, I suspect that it will have been overspent by fivefold, but we will see.
The Minister made the point in response to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that a lot of people between the ages of 25 and 35 choose to share accommodation, which I entirely accept, and it is not right that people who are not in work should have separate accommodation when people in work cannot afford that. To my mind, the key question that has not been identified is how large that shared accommodation is. Clearly, it is reasonable for two people who are not connected to each other in an emotional or sexual partnership to share a two-bedroom flat, but the Minister seemed to be suggesting earlier that single people in a one-bedroom flat, rather than going down to shared accommodation, could take someone in and thereby go into shared accommodation. Can he help us with the statistics on how many instances there are of two people who are not sexually connected who share a one-bedroom flat, which is the obvious analogy, rather than a two-bedroom flat where they have separate accommodation within that flat?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I do not have that precise information to hand, but if I can find it I will make it available and write to the noble Baroness. I can say that, in 60 per cent of cases, two people claiming the shared accommodation rate would be more than the two-bedroom accommodation rate. There are many areas where sharing gets the group of people more money than if they formally join up as a couple and go for the same accommodation.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Sorry, is the noble Lord saying that someone who is in single-bedroom accommodation and now finds that they are subject to SAR because they are 33, should, instead of going down to a shared room, actually seek a larger two-person two-bedroom flat with another person, thus possibly increasing the HB bill?
Lord Freud
There will be quite a lot of flexing around, and people do accommodate to systems. According to the figures that I have, regarding shared rates, in 60 per cent of localities the two-bedroom LHA rate is less than twice the shared rate. In 90 per cent of localities the shared rate would cover the relevant share of the three or four-bedroom rate. The point is that, when you are looking at pressure on the market, which noble Lords and the SSAC have been concerned about, fundamentally we are taking pressure off the market by looking for more sharing. Clearly, there are local adjustments but, as I have said, this has proven to be a very flexible market in the past, and we have no reason to expect it not to continue to be.
The question raised by my noble friend Lord Stoneham about the shortfalls in London—the difference between the one-bedroom rate and the shared accommodation rate—reflects the generally higher rents in London. The ability of those not on benefits to live in self-contained accommodation in these areas is also very limited, and many, therefore, already choose to share. Indeed, as my noble friend Lady Thomas pointed out, it is for exactly that reason that such decisions have been taken for very many years in London. I think I can join her in that experience.
It has been suggested that the Government are doing little to encourage the development of houses in multiple occupation. Landlords make commercial decisions about whether to provide such accommodation, and government’s influence on those decisions is limited. We do, however, have a role in setting the planning framework and licensing requirements. Communities and Local Government Ministers have considered whether the licensing regime, which places added burdens on landlords to comply with various health and safety measures, should be relaxed. However, with more people likely to require this kind of accommodation, they do not think it appropriate to remove or reduce this protection.
We also have the rent-a-room scheme, which is an income tax relief introduced in 1992 intended to boost the private rented sector. It encourages individuals to offer spare accommodation in their own homes at affordable rents to low-income groups. Homeowners and tenants who let furnished accommodation in their own homes are exempt from income tax on rental income of up to £4,250 a year.
As I said earlier, it is too soon to know how claimants might react to these changes. Those who will be affected by this change will have to consider their alternatives and make decisions about where and how they live. Some may decide to share with others, move back or stay with their family, or they may manage to find employment that allows them to stay in self-contained accommodation. These are the decisions that people in lower-paid work but not on benefits have to make, and those on benefit should not be sheltered by the state from this sort of responsibility. Picking up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, on work incentives, there is clearly no incentive to work if someone is in a property that is unaffordable for those who are in work. We have at the same time the issue of fairness if someone who is not on benefits is unable to afford a house that someone on benefits can afford.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for his usual, comprehensive diligence in responding to the debate. We have had a very good debate, which I do not want to prolong. I take it from what the Minister said that he has registered that there is continuing concern, not just among the bodies that we have cited but in this House and in this Committee, about the potential effects of implementing this policy. I also take it, from his invitation to feed back any information on untoward results, that any evidence that might controvert the evidence on which the department has founded the regulations will be happily received. Speaking for myself, I will be watching this area, as will other colleagues, extremely carefully over the next 12 months.
As well as being very grateful to everyone who has taken part in the debate, I want to say two other things before I sit down. First, the Minister has invested discretionary housing payments with a role that I did not think that they had. He said—I wrote it down—that there is “no limit” on discretionary housing payments, but he has to be very careful about this. I do not want to read too much into what he said but, for example, a very powerful case was mentioned this afternoon. I take it from what he said that, as there is no limit on discretionary housing payments, it would be possible for a local authority, if it thought it appropriate, to apply discretionary housing payments not just for transitional provision or for temporary problem solving but—if it has the budget, which is an important point that was made—to apply its discretion systematically over time. That is not what I thought that discretionary housing payments were for. We will all go away and reflect carefully on that.
My final point is that we need to monitor all of this, including the use of discretionary housing payments. We also need to ensure that we keep in kilter with the devolved Administrations, as I am not sure that these local authority duties are exactly the same in other jurisdictions in the United Kingdom.
Having said all that, this has been a valuable debate, for which I am really grateful. I know the Minister of State well enough to know that he has obviously engaged with the issues seriously, and we are grateful for that. If we get any other evidence or feedback from other sources, including the pressure groups and other bodies that are competent to operate in these areas, we will take advantage of his kind offer by ensuring that the department is made fully aware of the circumstances as those unfold after January next year. I am grateful to the Minister for making that clear.
On that basis, I am happy that the Committee has indeed considered the statutory instrument in what has been a very valuable debate, and I am grateful to the Minister for his reply.
Proposed National Policy Statement for Hazardous Waste
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the proposed National Policy Statement for Hazardous Waste.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)
My Lords, I welcome this debate on the Government’s Draft National Policy Statement for Hazardous Waste. Hazardous waste still arises in significant amounts. Even in the current economic situation, almost 3.8 million tonnes was produced in 2010. Arisings may increase further as the European Union introduces new definitions that may mean that more wastes are classified as hazardous in future. As hazardous waste can cause harm to human health or the environment if not effectively managed, it is vital that we have sufficient facilities to manage it safely and sustainably.
Our main objectives for the management of hazardous waste are to protect human health and the environment from the risks that may be posed by inadequate management of hazardous waste, and to encourage the development of facilities that allow the management of hazardous waste in a safe and sustainable manner. There is scope to recycle or recover more hazardous waste than we do at present. For example, used lubricants can be converted back into base lubricating oil if processed to a very high level, and some contaminated soil can be treated to extract oils and other useful substances. However, there remain hazardous wastes such as asbestos where there is no viable recycling or recovery option or where the substances in the waste are potentially so dangerous that sending them for final disposal is really the only option.
It is a matter of policy as well as a legal requirement that England should have a range of facilities and plant for the recovery of hazardous waste to help meet the country’s needs. We believe that the market provides the best means of ensuring that adequate waste infrastructure develops, as it is industry, spurred on by the market, that has the expertise required to consider where facilities are needed and the appropriate technologies to use. Our role as a Government is to provide a clear steer on the types of facility needed and the framework within which the infrastructure is to be provided. We want to ensure that within this framework there is scope for innovation—an approach welcomed by industry.
The economies of scale needed to be viable mean that they are more likely to serve national need than facilities for other types of waste. Nationally significant infrastructure such as larger hazardous waste facilities has historically encountered some difficulties in obtaining planning permission under the Town and Country Planning Act system because there will inevitably be a conflict between local concerns on the possible impact of the development and the national interest.
Applications for nationally significant infrastructure run a high risk of being refused by the local authority and being referred to a planning inquiry. These inquiries can go on for many months while the need for the facility is established and this can deter the waste management industry from putting forward proposals for the nationally significant infrastructure we need. It is for this reason that the Planning Act 2008 has established a new planning system for the determination of applications for development consent for nationally significant infrastructure. Under this system, decisions will be taken centrally for infrastructure serving national need. National policy statements are an integral part of this new planning system and the national policy statement for hazardous waste will provide a framework document for planning decisions on nationally significant infrastructure for hazardous waste. Although decisions will be made centrally, there will still be many opportunities for local concerns to be taken into account. Applicants are required to consult the local area before submitting any applications for development consent. The decision-maker will refuse to accept an application if it considers that the consultation has not been adequate. There will also be opportunities for the local community and other key groups to make their concerns known while the application is being assessed. The system will therefore allow the views of local communities to be well represented and properly taken into account, while decisions will be taken by elected Ministers, taking account of both local concerns and national needs.
When we talk about nationally significant hazardous waste infrastructure, we mean very large facilities. The Planning Act 2008 covers new facilities with a total annual capacity to manage more than 30,000 tonnes of hazardous waste and more than 100,000 tonnes for landfill. These thresholds are set out in the Planning Act 2008. The Act will also cover expansions to existing facilities where they increase capacity by more than these amounts. The Draft National Policy Statement for Hazardous Waste reflects our objectives for the management of hazardous waste. It will both guide the decision-maker on how applications for development consent for such projects should be assessed and provide real clarity to potential investors on the sort of facilities that the Government would like to see being developed. It will apply only in England. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland planning consents for all nationally significant hazardous waste projects are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly respectively and therefore do not form part of this NPS.
Many potential benefits could be realised through the development of the hazardous waste facilities set out in this national policy statement. The decision-maker will need to take these into account, while still taking full account of any potential adverse impacts. The planning system operates in the public interest to ensure that the location of proposed development is acceptable. In considering applications for development consent for nationally significant hazardous waste infrastructure, the decision-maker will need to take account of a variety of environmental, social and economic impacts at national, regional and local levels. Modern, appropriately located, well run and well regulated waste management facilities are operated in line with current pollution control techniques and standards and should pose little risk to human health and the environment.
The NPS has been subjected to an appraisal of sustainability. The appraisal has assessed the potential impacts of the policy set out in the national policy statement and has concluded that, overall, the national policy statement would have a broadly positive effect on the sustainability issues identified. We have worked closely with the Department for Communities and Local Government to ensure that the statement is fit for purpose and consistent with other national policy statements.
The NPS for Hazardous Waste is out for public consultation until 20 October and is undergoing scrutiny by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. We will carefully consider any recommendations made by that committee, the outcome of consultation and the issues raised in this debate before revising the policy statement prior to what is called “designation”—the final publication of the NPS.
This debate is to discuss whether the Draft National Policy Statement for Hazardous Waste fulfils its requirements under the Planning Act and is fit for purpose. I commend it to the Committee.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I broadly welcome this draft national policy statement. Perhaps across your Lordships’ House there is a certain degree of consent by absence, judging by the attendance in the Committee today, although it may be that the planning wonks in the House are distracted by the business in the main Chamber, which will certainly be in the planning arena. I very much welcome the scrutiny that this statement is receiving from the Select Committee in the other place. I mostly enjoyed using the wonderful facilities of Parliament TV to watch the evidence that the Minister gave yesterday to that committee.
I welcome the four principles set out in Part 2 of the draft statement in terms of the principles in forming government policy on hazardous waste: to protect human health and the environment; the implementation of the waste hierarchy; proximity and self-sufficiency; and then climate change. I welcomed what the Minister said to the Select Committee, and this almost seemed to be a fifth principle, that the statement should be as unambiguous as possible so that those seeking to operate within this consent regime can do so with a degree of certainty and flexibility.
Those are all things that I welcome but the nature of debate in this Committee and in your Lordships’ House means that we tend to focus on the things that we disagree about more than on what we agree about. I have, on the latest count, five issues to raise that I hope will be addressed in the final policy statement when it is published by Defra, and that does not include my assumption that the current reference to the IPC will be replaced by the Secretary of State, assuming that the Localism Bill that is being debated in the Chamber achieves Royal Assent, in which case the Secretary of State will take on the powers that the Infrastructure Planning Committee currently uses.
The first of those issues is around the consent regime itself. I know that there are one or two voices saying that in—I would anticipate—virtually every case where an application is made under this regime there will also be an application for a permit from the Environment Agency, particularly in respect of the pollution effects of hazardous waste processing. One or two of those voices have raised the question of whether it is worth there being a single consent regime for the sake of simplicity for the applicant—and for the understanding of the public.
It is worth exploring that further. If my understanding of this is correct, the consent regime that we are discussing in the context of this policy statement is around land use planning, with all the various criteria that the Minister set out in his opening statement. However, a lot of the public concern would inevitably be about pollution as a result of hazardous waste processing taking place in their backyard—to use the vernacular. I do not know that members of the public would be that patient with explanations along the lines of, “This is an issue that should be raised in respect of the Environment Agency”, and “That is an issue that should be raised in respect of the hazardous waste consent regime under the Planning Act”. I should be grateful for any comments from the Minister on whether some negotiation can be had with the Environment Agency, the MMO and any other part of the consent regime so that we could have a single consent regime.
The second issue follows on from that. Assuming that the Minister and his officials have thought about this—which is a fair assumption to make—and resist the temptation to agree with me and go for a single regime, and we then have a split regime, my concern is that we make sure that the timing and the sequencing of that regime work well for applicants. The Minister expressed concern about unnecessary delays in processing applications in the regimes that we have been using, which I agree need to be streamlined. In that case, how will he make sure that the sequencing and timing mean that things go through smoothly, as applicants potentially need to get consents from the Environment Agency and the Marine Management Organisation, as well as any other consents that I have not clocked? That sequencing is very important to streamline the process.
The third issue, which is not unrelated to how those various regimes in the consent process might work, is localism, which I know was raised with the Minister by some of his honourable friends on the EFRA Select Committee in the other place yesterday. I understand, and support, there being a national regime for large and significant infrastructure. There is a strong case for taking some of these strategically important and difficult decisions at a national level, because there are times when it is very difficult for a local planning authority to be able to deal with them in a way that retains the objectivity that one needs when one is making quasi-judicial decisions of this kind. However, I would again be interested in hearing on the record the Minister’s view on how this interacts with the localism being debated in the main Chamber at the moment. I have my own doubts about how well the new localism and planning regimes being debated elsewhere will work in practice, and whether members of local planning authorities under those regimes will be able to resist the nimby tendencies that are often quite powerful at the ballot box. I am perfectly comfortable with the approach that Defra is taking, but I just want to hear from the Minister how he reconciles that with the approach to planning being taken by CLG.
The Minister will not be surprised that my other two issues are around definition and thresholds. My understanding is that the definition of hazardous waste—and the statement is clear about it—is that set out in Regulation 5 of Hazardous Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2005. Those are derived from the European Union’s definitions of hazardous waste. Do the Government have to be constrained by the European Union definition? I understand that the Government have to deliver on items that the EU defines in the directive because it is a directive. But if the Minister wanted to add some additional items to the list for his regime in the UK, could he do so? Then it may be possible, in respect of the questions around lithium or emerging technology that he was asked yesterday, to anticipate some future needs in terms of hazardous waste regulation and, by including some of those items that the EU have not got to yet on the list, provide some encouragement for them to move up the waste hierarchy, to which I know the Minister attaches a considerable importance.
Finally, on thresholds, particularly given the fifth principle that I have attributed to the Minister of being as unambiguous as possible, I should like some clarity from him around the flexibility that there appeared to be from the evidence session yesterday. It is clear that there are two thresholds—one of 30,000 for most hazardous waste and one of 100,000 for hazardous building material going into landfill. As he said in his opening statement, that applies with new build and with those facilities increasing capacity. What was then said was that the Planning Act 2008 gives provision for amounts less than that to be considered under the national policy statement process if the Minister thinks that that is appropriate. Those listening, or those who read the final statement when it is agreed, need more clarity so that they understand when the Minister is likely to use the flexibility that he has so that it is predictable and, in his words to the Committee, “unambiguous”. If I can get some reasonable responses either now or in the final statement, I would be extremely happy with some very good work from his department and his officials.
Lord Addington
My Lords, I come in as the stand-in for those whom the noble Lord, Lord Knight, describes as planning wonks or geeks, not that I would describe any of my friends like that—not if they were within striking distance, anyway. Looking through this draft proposal, I found myself thinking, “How could you possibly object to it in principle?” The “Summary of Government Policy in Part 2” lists protecting human health and the environment, the implementation of the waste hierarchy, the proximity of self-sufficiency and climate change. All of these things seem to be like motherhood and apple pie. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, once again beat me to the draw—he is clearly better versed on this subject than I am. But one of the questions raised will be the nimby tendency which runs through this. There is always an excellent reason for doing oneself a good turn at the ballot box. If someone wants a facility moved one mile down the road or at least out of sight, nimbyism will be there. A clarification of the process and some sort of national strategy is undoubtedly required. Unless we gain a good description of why this should happen now and guidance on how all the various factors pull together, it is going to create an unnecessary degree of resistance. It is always going to be the case that you inconvenience somebody when you do something positive. That is just a principle that runs through everything.
We should state clearly and categorically that we are going to have to accept that occasionally certain people will be inconvenienced, although hopefully as little as possible, if we are to do things like dealing with our own waste, not transporting it across the world. Indeed, let us take transport somewhere whose regulations are not as good as ours, pull it into the ecosystem and put some more carbon into the atmosphere by transporting it in the first place—hey, there’s a great long-term strategy. If we are dealing with it ourselves, it is a good idea to have a coherent strategy. Greater clarification on how that all pulls together would be helpful. All of us who are involved in any form of national politics will have to come back and defend this. Today, when we have not had camaraderie of spirit throughout the processes of the House, it would be good to have that now and to hear how we are going to achieve this.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this may have been a concise debate but it has been very thorough. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Knight of Weymouth and Lord Addington, for their contribution. I do not see the noble Lord, Lord Addington, as a stand-in for anyone, but if I appeared to choke at a particular moment it was when he referred to policy wonks and I happened to look up at the Annunciator and see that my noble friend Lord Greaves was speaking in the Chamber. My noble friend Lord Greaves has long been by my side in debates on these sorts of subjects, and I am sure that my noble friend Lord Addington would not seek to represent himself as a stand-in for him.
I have listened with interest to all that has been said. I said at the beginning that this matter is in consultation at this moment. This debate will form part of that consultation, in the sense that we are determined to make this into as good and effective a document as we can. It is an important part of our commitment to sustainability in managing hazardous waste. It will provide the clarity on the Government’s intentions for the management of hazardous waste that the industry needs in order to bring forward proposals for the development of facilities that will allow us to drive the management of hazardous waster up the waste hierarchy. The detailed guidance set out for both applicants and decision-makers will help to ensure that decisions for applications for development consent for all these major facilities are undertaken in a way that properly takes account of both potential benefits and potential adverse effects, are sustainable and are in line with government objectives.
I shall address some of the points made by noble Lords in this debate, and I thank them for the opportunity to clarify some matters. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, sought an explanation of how materials were defined as being hazardous. He correctly pointed out that the list is EU-wide. It is not the Government’s intention to add to it on a voluntary basis because that could indeed disadvantage UK industry to the benefit of our European competitors. A level playing field is the whole point of having a Europe-wide procedure. However, there is nothing to stop the processing of identified hazardous materials at a hazardous waste site. For example, the noble Lord mentioned the issue of lithium batteries.
The needs case is fundamental to the NPS. We believe that the needs case set out in the NPS is robust and fully takes account of our expectations for hazardous waste arisings during the shelf life of this NPS. I made it clear yesterday that this will be reviewed after a five-year period. The industry has also said that it is about right. It is of course possible that an unexpected need will emerge, and we will have to consider the scope of the NPS by making some provision for that in the statement.
The thresholds, of course, must be set at the right level. There have been some suggestions that 30,000 tonnes is too low and that 50,000 tonnes might be better, but we need to get an infrastructure that serves a national rather than a more regional or local need. The thresholds are set out in the Planning Act and have of course been considered and agreed by Parliament. The levels chosen were based on an assessment of the capacity of a typical treatment plant for hazardous waste serving more than simply a regional need, and were right at the time. They were put into the Planning Act. However, we will take note of any concerns about levels chosen and it is open to us to amend them by order if this proves to be justified.
There will be concerns about the potential impacts of these facilities, and my noble friend Lord Addington drew attention to the sensitivity of considering the location of these plants. However, modern, appropriately located, well run and well regulated facilities that are operated in line with current pollution control techniques and standards should pose little risk. The NPS has been subject to an appraisal of sustainability. This shows that the policy set out in it has the potential to provide an overall positive impact. There will clearly be many benefits from the provision of new facilities that allow the more sustainable management of hazardous waste. There is also the potential for some negative impacts, depending on the exact location and technology used, but individual projects will be subject to further assessment, and the NPS will guide the decision-maker on how to weigh these impacts against any potential negative impacts in order to be able to take sustainable decisions.
There has been some concern that the system set out in the Planning Act whereby decisions for nationally significant infrastructure are taken out of the town and country planning system and decided centrally will not sufficiently take account of local interests. Perhaps I may help the noble Lord, Lord Knight, because he asked me to define this. I have some text here that would be useful in terms of definition. The Planning Act system nevertheless offers the opportunity for local concerns to be taken into account. Under the Planning Act, applicants are required to publish a statement setting out how they will undertake consultation in a local area, and do so on that basis before they submit any applications for development consent. They must tell the decision-maker the results of the consultation, and the decision maker will refuse to accept the application if it considers that the consultation has not been adequate. There will also be opportunities for the local community and other key groups—we are thinking of neighbourhood planning forums and neighbourhood plans—to make their concerns known while the application is being assessed. All interested parties will be invited to a preliminary meeting and invited to attend a hearing where they will have a further opportunity to make their views known. The system will allow the views of local communities to be well represented and properly taken into account. It forms part of the process on which the decision-maker has to be satisfied.
It is absolutely right that decisions for infrastructure that will benefit the nation are taken centrally, and I welcome the general agreement of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on that. However, local issues are very important and potential developers will need to undertake the sort of comprehensive consultation that I have indicated prior to submitting their applications, and they will have to report the outcome to the decision maker. There will be opportunities for local interests to make their views known while the decision-maker is considering an application, and for them to attend relevant hearings. Local interests are key to trying to ensure that local communities can buy in to a decision made in the national interest.
As to why it will ultimately be Communities and Local Government Ministers who take decisions on hazardous waste infrastructure rather than my own department, this merely maintains the status quo. Historically, where applications were made under the Town and Country Planning Act system, they would be referred to the Planning Inspectorate, and CLG Ministers would make the decisions. We considered making a change, because hazardous waste is in effect a Defra responsibility, but it was concluded that there was merit in final decisions being taken by CLG Ministers since CLG has lead responsibility for planning issues. CLG Ministers would therefore be in the best position to make an impartial judgment on whether a proposed facility was an acceptable use of the land, taking into account all planning considerations. Other departments may do things differently for perfectly legitimate reasons. It is not a case of one size fits all, so there might be circumstances where another department took a different view from that of Defra.
On compatibility with the national planning policy framework, the principles of NPS and the NPPF are broadly compatible. Both have a presumption in favour of sustainable development. Policy in the NPS on how the impacts of development should be assessed and taken into account in decision-making has been based on relevant planning policies set out in planning policy statements and older-style planning policy guidance. The draft NPPF streamlines existing planning policy into a consolidated set of priorities. It sets out the Government’s requirements for the planning system only to the extent that it is relevant, proportionate and necessary to do so. However, it remains broadly consistent with current planning policy and with those elements of the NPS dealing with planning policy on the impacts of development. Of course, detailed waste planning policies are not included in the draft NPPF and instead continue to be addressed by Planning Policy Statement 10. The policies in the NPS remain broadly consistent with that pre-existing document.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, said that we could have taken the opportunity here to merge the planning and permitting systems. However, the two systems have different objectives. The object of the planning system is to consider whether the proposed use or development of the land is in the public interest and the potential impacts of it. It will also consider wider impacts such as that from increased traffic, the potential loss of any other amenity from the land and the visual impact of the facility. The objective of the environmental permitting system, on the other hand, is to protect human health and the environment by controlling emissions and discharges throughout the lifetime of the facility, through its design, operation, decommissioning and closure phases. It addresses other matters not germane to the planning function such as the nature and competence of the operator, the technologies employed, pollution monitoring requirements, record-keeping and other requirements emanating from a wide range of EU directives. Given these different objectives, it is entirely appropriate that the processes are kept separate, although it is recognised that there are matters of common interest. We will look at the noble Lord’s suggestions on matters such as consistency of language, and we are committed also to looking at timing and synchronisation. The noble Lord made the point that, for the sake of applicants, there is a lot to be said for the synchronisation of the procedure, with the two channels running together.
The decision-maker will need to be assured that development consent can be granted, taking full account of environmental impacts. The IPC and its successors—as the noble Lord pointed out, the Secretary of State—will therefore need to work closely with the Environment Agency and other relevant bodies. This happens now under the Town and Country Planning Act system and we are not aware that it causes any difficulty.
This NPS is only at the draft stage. It is still up for consultation and is undergoing scrutiny by the EFRA Committee. We will need to consider the committee’s recommendations and the results of consultation before preparing the final version of the NPS for approval by Parliament. And, of course, we will consider the points that have been made during this debate.
House of Lords
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Arrangement of Business
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Lord De Mauley
My Lords, it may be helpful to remind your Lordships of the advisory speaking time of eight minutes for Back-Bench contributions. As indicated on the Order Paper, it is expected that the winders will not begin their speeches before 1 pm.
Health and Social Care Bill
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13:45 - Division on Lord Rea's amendment - Ayes: 220 / Noes: 354 - Division on Lord Rea's amendment disagreed.
14:22 - Division on Lord Owen's amendment. - Ayes: 262 / Noes: 330 - Amendment disagreed.
Lord Campbell of Alloway
My Lords, the purpose of this short speech, within the advice that has been given, is to oppose the amendment to the commitment Motion to be moved later on. I say that with all due respect, of course, to the noble Lord, Lord Owen. There are two reasons for doing so and they are fairly short. The first is that this Bill proposes urgent requisite reform—immediate reform—of the NHS structure and means of implementation and there is no way in which it can be delayed. This was as expounded by my noble friend Lord Howe and spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, and many other noble Lords, some of whom agreed, others of whom did not agree. I support the Government.
There is also a problem of extraordinary importance beyond the actual remit of what the Bill is concerned with. We are entering, and have entered, a threat of global recession. The eurozone problems have not been resolved. The banking crisis has not been resolved. Whether we incur more borrowing to pay the interest on our massive debt, I do not know, but there is a problem here because if the country is in this state the first thing that has to be done is to seek to retain our triple A rating. If we do not support the Government, the consequences could be catastrophic. Those are the only reasons that I can give. This extraordinary situation concerns not just the Bill but the realm and the Government. We need to support them in a moment of crisis. I hope that undertakings will be given by my noble friend Lord Howe—if he is able to give them—to the effect that the Government will, before and after Royal Assent to the Bill, continue to take into consideration proposals, many of which have been spoken to by your Lordships. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak.
Lord Winston
My Lords, some three or so weeks ago an 80 year-old lady was admitted to an inner-city hospital in the United Kingdom complaining of abdominal pain. She went to accident and emergency where she had a series of cardiac arrests and was resuscitated on four occasions, according to what I was told. Remarkably, that evening she was still alive in accident and emergency and the following morning she was sitting up in bed talking, not terribly coherently but she was communicating and was capable of asking for a cup of tea. She was still under the surgeons, of course, because she had come in labelled with abdominal pain.
The physicians were concerned about the lady and they did an ECG. They found that her ST segments were elevated and that therefore she may have had a coronary thrombosis, so they phoned Hammersmith Hospital—I have the privilege of being associated with that hospital—because there doctors do thrombolysing. There was some toing and froing about whether she should be admitted there for thrombolysing treatment. Eventually, it was pointed out that on the whole Hammersmith Hospital did not contemplate doing thrombolysing on 80 year-old patients. The patient was left there and eventually she was seen by a surgeon who did an MRI, a CAT scan and various other investigations and decided that the lady possibly had a ruptured diverticulum. The surgeon was not sure whether she was fit to be operated on. In the mean time, an anaesthetist saw her. The anaesthetist said that if the surgeon was prepared to operate, he was prepared to anaesthetise. The surgeon said that if the anaesthetist was prepared to anaesthetise, he was prepared to operate. The lady underwent a laparotomy and the diverticulum was repaired. She spent the next four days in intensive care, where she died an undignified death, which was not what her relatives wanted. They probably would not have wanted her to be resuscitated in the first place.
I tell noble Lords this brief story because it is an example of the lack of co-ordination which is common in the health service, which the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and I have discussed. We both agree that it needs to be improved. Unfortunately, the Bill does not address that issue at all. In fact, one of my concerns is that the fragmentation may actually make the situation much worse. Co-ordination was addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, yesterday, speaking as chairman of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He argued that we need to close hospitals. I agree but it will not be easy to do that under the Bill. However, the noble Lord did not come entirely clean—unfortunately, he is not in his place this morning—and point out that the Hammersmith Hospital’s former trust—now the Imperial College trust—is, I believe, some £50 million in deficit this year. There is clearly an urgent need there although, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, I do not believe that the NHS is in crisis.
To illustrate that point, I went to an independent think tank, the Commonwealth Fund, an American organisation which looks at healthcare around the world, and looked at some of its statistics. It turns out that at the end of the previous Labour Government we spent two and a half times less on healthcare than they do in the United States, 18 per cent less than they do in France and more than 40 per cent less than they do in Germany or Holland. It is interesting, therefore, to look at one issue which is really serious for us; the rising problem of ageing in the health service. I chose to look at their statistics for two operations associated with ageing; hip replacement and knee replacement. A knee replacement in the UK costs half what it costs in the US, is 10 per cent or 15 per cent cheaper than in Italy or France and costs 30 per cent less than it costs in Germany. A hip replacement is three times cheaper on the public purse in the United Kingdom than in the US. Do we therefore do fewer operations? Actually not. In the US they do 64 knee replacements per 100,000 of the population compared with 137 in the UK, 121 in Germany and 95 in France. With hips, Germany tops the league with 258 operations per 100,000; France does 208; we do just under 200; Italy, 141 and the United States, 139.
So actually the legacy of the previous Government which we keep hearing about might be a bit better than has been suggested by the present Government. We have heard a great deal about that legacy, but actually, the health service was left in a pretty fine state. I agree completely with what the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said yesterday about outcomes. Of course, it is pointless doing lots of hip operations unless we can match our outcomes with Europe. The figures are not available for those things, but the Commonwealth Fund addressed some interesting issues. Of course, as the Prime Minister said, we have to do something about the health service, but I am not sure that the figures of an independent, international body outside the UK with no political point to make at all can be refuted.
One issue is the satisfaction and the level of successful care recorded by the Commonwealth Fund. I have some figures here to show that the United Kingdom does incredibly well. For an expenditure of something like one-third of that of the United States, in every score we do better than the United States, better than New Zealand, about as well as Holland, much better than Germany, much better than Canada and much better than Australia—typical OECD countries which are rather similar to ourselves. The only place where we failed was in something which the noble Earl, Lord Howe, addressed in his speech yesterday. In the third or fourth paragraph of his speech, he talked about the need to extend longevity. The issue of longevity was clearly described recently by my noble friend Lord Darzi, not in the Chamber yesterday, but in a speech I heard him give at Imperial College last week. He showed a London Tube map from South Kensington, where Imperial College is situated, through Westminster towards Canning Town and in those seven miles longevity drops by seven years. So your expectancy of life in South Kensington, if you are a male, is around 77 and in Canning Town it is about 70. That has nothing to do with the health service; it has to do with education, with the environment, with something that the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, referred to yesterday—smoking and obesity. Twenty-five per cent of our population have a BMI of greater than 30. That is a very serious issue. We are about the third worst nation in the world after the US and New Zealand.
These things will not be changed by the Bill. In my view the Bill is unnecessary and, I am afraid to say, irresponsible.
Baroness Hussein-Ece
My Lords, like many in your Lordships’ House, I have had many letters and e-mails from people who are huge supporters of the NHS, many expressing real fear. It is unfortunate that much of the campaign we have experienced has relied on convincing the public that the NHS is set to be privatised. Many are convinced that we are heading for an American-style system and I am sure that we have all had e-mails saying that we do not want to see that. People are also worried that their children and grandchildren will not be able to receive the services that they received in their lifetime. I believe that the politicising of the debate on the NHS to this level is at best unhelpful and at worst irresponsible. It is playing on people’s fears, and I felt quite saddened by some of the e-mails that I have had. I want to see a greatly improved and more responsive health service for my children and grandchildren.
We have huge challenges, as many of your Lordships have already mentioned. We have an ageing population; more and more people will become reliant on health and social care services that must—really must—become more responsive and integrated. We have heard from successive Health Secretaries and successive Governments that it has always been their aspiration to integrate health and social care, but on the ground we know that this has not always been the case. Patients should not be passive recipients of health services. They should be treated as individuals, people who place their trust in their local health service and expect quality of care. I believe the general public have far higher expectations that we probably had when we were growing up.
Like many others, my family has experienced the best and the worst of care, and it is the worst that we need to ensure is consistently always as good as the best; for example, the care and treatment of older people, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, has just touched upon, is not always very good in many hospitals and remains unsatisfactory. I have a story too. Four years ago when my terminally ill 88 year-old father was left covered in bedsores, with poor pain management and personal care and the loss of his basic dignity, we felt there was no one in the hospital who was prepared to take responsibility for the poor nursing care—I was always sent to speak to somebody else. The stories in the media of older people being denied basic care and dignity are nothing short of a scandal, and unfortunately we still hear them daily.
I remember a document called Hungry in Hospital?, produced a decade ago by the Association of Community Health Councils when the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, who is not in his place today, was the chief executive. It recorded the plight of many older people who were simply left to starve because there were not enough nurses to assist with the most basic form of care—food. Recent reports unfortunately show that this is still happening. I want to see reforms that ensure that this never happens.
I also want to see a better and properly resourced health and social care system for disabled children, and for child and adolescent mental health services. I received a briefing note, as have many others, I am sure, from the campaign group Every Disabled Child Matters. Disabled children are the fastest growing group in the population of disabled people and they deserve better than the disproportionately lower priority than adults that they receive when it comes to the allocation of funds. Time and again I have dealt with cases, in my previous life as a councillor and more recently, where the individual service may be good or even excellent, but the collective system has let that child down. The current legislation does not provide for this.
Health inequalities remain at a grotesque level for such an affluent country. The NHS alone cannot resolve this. I am concerned that the single most important aspect of the phrase “No decision about me without me” is still at risk of failure. This relates to commissioners’ duty to ensure the involvement of individual patients in decisions on managing their own care and treatment. I worked for years at the forefront of patient and public involvement in the NHS as the chief officer of a community health council in one of the most deprived parts of the country. CHCs were very effective. They were the patients’ voice in the NHS, with a statutory right to be consulted on any changes in their local health services. They were local and they were mainly effective. Cynics at the time suggested that that was why they were unceremoniously scrapped by the last Government in 2003, to be replaced by a plethora of successive patients’ groups at a cost of over £70 million in the first year alone. I welcome the proposals to strengthen patients’ voices, but I have concerns that must be looked at if this Bill is to be properly scrutinised at Committee.
My concerns include the patient and public involvement requirements under both the current legislation and the Bill—that those who use services are involved in planning, changes and decisions affecting how services operate. The definition of involvement is very weak. What does that mean? The National Health Service Act 2006 diluted the involvement of patients and the public so that this could be met simply by giving information. The duty is neither comprehensive nor consistent across commissioners and all types of providers; for example, the proposed PPI duty on Monitor makes no sense, referring to whatever it feels “appropriate”. There needs to be a statutory duty on Monitor to respond to referrals made to it by health overview and scrutiny committees because at the moment it simply ignores them.
I would like to see a much more patient-centred total health and well-being model, which would ensure that the Bill is fit for purpose. I am pleased that the Government have recognised that the powers of health and well-being boards need to be strengthened to ensure the co-ordination of commissioning plans with the health and well-being needs of the area. However, this proposal needs to go further. I was initially a supporter of primary care trusts. I sat on my local PCT board for four years, representing the local authority. We had a good relationship and integrated services, but many of my colleagues across the country simply did not, with local authorities barely having a working relationship with their PCTs.
My local PCT decided to close down a major primary healthcare centre, against huge public opposition. It was put out to consultation and the PCT’s decision was referred to the council’s health and well-being board, where it was properly scrutinised by democratically elected local councillors for many months. When the committee’s report was complete, the PCT board refused even to allow the chair to present the committee’s findings to the board. We were left with a huge conflict. A board of people who were unaccountable to the public and who only answered to the Secretary of State were in the driving seat, refusing to take any notice of a democratically elected health and well-being board. This experience convinced me that the present system needs reforming. Yes, the Secretary of State must be legally and politically responsible for the NHS, but there needs to be more accountability at all levels.
To conclude, I find myself in complete agreement with what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, said yesterday. She said:
“Our job is to scrutinise and improve this Bill”.—[Official Report, 11/10/11; col.1480]
I totally agree. She somewhat contradicted herself later by saying that she would support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rea—in other words, no scrutiny of the Bill. However, I am very clear that this Bill needs improving and amending to ensure that we not only improve patient care but give patients and the public greater accountability within the health service and greater confidence. Many of us have welcomed the substantial changes that have already taken place, but I think most of us would agree that the status quo is not really an option.
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield
My Lords, recasting the health service arouses more sensitivities than any other reform in our national life, as this Chamber has witnessed over the past 24 hours. Why? Because the National Health Service touches more of our people more intimately than any other state-funded activity. As the great RH Tawney once wrote:
“Only those institutions are loved which touch the imagination”.
No institution surpasses the NHS in meeting the Tawney criterion. No institution ever has, since 5 July 1948, the day the service came into being, lifting more anxiety off more shoulders than any other social reform in our history. That moment was the closest we have ever come to institutionalising altruism.
In Tawney terms, for 63 years it has been impossible to conceive of our country without the NHS as a key ingredient in the way we imagine ourselves. The creation of the health service was and remains the most lustrous achievement of what historians call “Mr Attlee’s Settlement”, part of the late war/early post-war British New Deal, although we never called it that, which embraced Rab Butler’s Education Act 1944 and the national insurance legislation, as well as the National Health Service Act 1946. And yet the tension that ripples through the Bill before us today flows from its attempt to sustain traces of those post-war principles while injecting the stimulus of markets, associated with that other great politico-economic weather-maker of our times, the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher.
My own instincts are more towards the Attleean end of the spectrum on health matters but I understand and respect the motives of those possessing stronger market impulses than mine, although few see health as an area where the market should rip without inhibition. Even that most thoroughbred of free marketeers, Mr Enoch Powell, as Health Minister in the early 1960s, did not. Asked by his biographer, Simon Heffer, about the first big post-war hospital building programme, whose planning and funding he oversaw, Mr Powell replied,
“The people have willed it. Therefore, they must have it”.
I suspect there are many in our country who would wish Parliament now to find a way of fusing the best in both instincts—of sculpting an approach that does not involve the Secretary of State for Health abandoning his traditional role as the ultimate and direct guarantor of a comprehensive service free at the point of delivery. Equally, I think, the public wish the Secretary of State to retain his function as accounter-in-chief to Parliament for the sustenance of that principle and the care it distributes to all across England, whatever their location, their needs or their socio-economic status.
For these reasons, I am sure your Lordships’ House will apply the closest scrutiny to those clauses of the Bill which incorporate the constitutional functions of the Secretary of State. Your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution, as we have heard many times in this debate, has raised serious concerns about both the legal status of the Secretary of State in the Bill before us and about the strength of his accountability to Parliament. I share those worries.
The Bill, too, needs to sustain the original DNA of the wartime Beveridge report of 1942 in which the provision of healthcare stood out as one of the,
“five giants on the road to reconstruction”—
ignorance, idleness, squalor, want, disease. Central to this scheme, Beveridge declared, was that,
“medical treatment covering all requirements will be provided for all citizens by a national health service organised under the health departments”.
Clause 1 of the National Health Service Act 1946 gave that crucial Beveridge-minted strand of institutional DNA statutory form.
I do not think our people wish us to abandon the Beveridge principle. Might it not be possible, if your Lordships support the idea of a Special Select Committee to examine the Secretary of State’s powers, constitutional functions and accountabilities, to find a form of drafting which meets those concerns? Perhaps Parliament could rediscover the value of that old device of a preamble to a statute which sets out the measure’s ethos and purpose. The current NHS constitution, in fact, carries a “preamble”, followed by a set of “principles” which are eloquent in this regard.
For these reasons, I urge noble Lords to support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Owen to enable the creation of a Select Committee to run concurrently with the Committee stage of this Bill with a very tight remit and a requirement to report before Christmas. I do so not in the spirit of wrecking this Bill but of improving it. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for the generous and courteous spirit in which they conducted their discussions with myself and the noble Lord, Lord Owen. I am grateful, too, to Mr Andrew Lansley for sending me a letter yesterday trying to assuage the anxieties about his proposed powers I expressed during an interview on the “Today” programme.
The NHS, to fulfil its purposes, needs to flourish and to work within the widest possible consensus, buttressed by the confidence of those it exists to serve and sustained by a Secretary of State whose constitutional position leaves him with the unambiguous duty of securing high-quality healthcare for all. I was encouraged yesterday by the pledge of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to put the Secretary of State’s responsibilities beyond doubt, though his words did jar with the thrust of his reply to the Constitution Committee’s report.
I stress again that my noble friend Lord Owen and I are not in the business of wrecking. This is a very tight proposal for a bespoke Select Committee. I hope the Secretary of State’s powers will be put beyond doubt. A specially tasked Select Committee for the purpose will be the best instrument for achieving that. I urge your Lordships to support my noble friend Lord Owen’s amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, we heard a good deal about cats last week, but your Lordships will recall the famous story in which Sherlock Holmes referred to the “curious incident of the dog in the night-time”. His perceptive medical companion pointed out that the dog did nothing in the night-time, to which Holmes replied that that was the curious incident. The failure of the dog in the story to bark has not been emulated in the response to the Bill, which has evoked the equivalent of a veritable canine cacophony.
The noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, called on his medical colleagues to stand up and be counted, but they have. In overwhelming numbers doctors, nurses and the royal colleges have rejected the Bill. No less than 70 per cent of general practitioners in the most recent survey called for it to be abandoned.
Like many of your Lordships, I have been deluged with briefings, letters and e-mails about the Bill of which precisely one has been in support of it. The Bill at inordinate length creates structures embodying organisations that are often either too big or too small to function effectively. They appear to be designed primarily to meet ideological rather than medical or social purposes. I must point out in passing that, despite its title, there is very little about social care in the Bill—another non-barking dog. Thus it creates the massive bureaucracy of a national Commissioning Board vested both with national responsibilities and the oversight and commissioning of primary care, dental and pharmaceutical services for localities. Monitor becomes an economic rather than a quality regulator, charged no longer with promoting competition but with repressing anti-competitive practices, a distinction that noble Lords might think is without a difference. The very name is apt because it was the name of the US navy vessel that in the civil war sank a Confederate warship in the first battle of ironclads and it is also the name of a carnivorous reptile.
Clinical commissioning groups have been established in a troubling act of pre-legislative implementation. They are not coterminous with local authority boundaries and, and in the case of my own city, Newcastle, for example, there are already two commissioning groups. This raises serious issues about how the commissioning of services in hospitals within a regional or sub-regional reach will actually work.
Strategic health authorities have similarly disappeared, to be replaced in effect, at least for the time being apparently, by four super-SHAs responsible to the national Commissioning Board. Health and well-being boards, which are welcome in theory, will not include representation from district councils in shire areas, despite the latter having important functions relating to communities and individuals alike. The boards moreover are effectively consultees, not decision-making bodies.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, pointed out, the Bill is strong on autonomy but weak on effective accountability, whether at national or local level. It is strong on competition, for which the evidence of benefit is perhaps less than compelling, but it is weak on failure. It replaces around 150 statutory bodies with something over 500. Perhaps its most welcome proposals are in the realm of public health, reversing the wrong turn taken in the 1973 reorganisation that did away with medical officers of health and chief public health inspectors who were powerful figures, as I can testify as someone who served on a health committee in my own authority at that time.
Even in the realm of public health, however, there are a number of concerns. Thus again, districts in two-tier areas are excluded, despite having specific responsibility for housing standards, food inspection and other environmental matters. There should be a register of qualified public health professionals and a public health appointee to the national Commissioning Board, on which, for that matter, the Chief Medical Officer should serve ex-officio.
There are also questions about duties. The Bill declares that:
“Each local authority must take steps as the Secretary of State considers appropriate for improving … health”.
The Secretary of State, on the other hand, “may” take steps, although the Bill in listing some possible steps makes no mention of sexual health, obesity, nutrition, alcohol or substance abuse, air and water quality, housing standards or occupational health. There is no duty on the NHS to co-operate with local authorities on public health issues, or on councils to co-operate with each other over, for example, disease prevention. There is a real concern about the status of Public Health England as an executive agency of a department to which it really must be free to speak plainly and publicly. In the words of Paul Burstow on Third Reading in another place:
“In legal terms, Public Health England and the Secretary of State are the same thing”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/9/11; col. 412.]
He makes the case, unintentionally, for having Public Health England as a separate body that is able to speak to the Secretary of State, rather than having the Secretary of State, as it were, speaking to himself.
There are also issues about the funding of public health services, and the funding being ring-fenced. It is unclear how the level of funding will be determined and on what basis it will be allocated. It will be essential for the Government to work with the Local Government Association on this, and to avoid limiting funding to nationally prescribed outcomes. Funding will have to reflect local circumstances. It will also be necessary to avoid the impact of the proposed health premium, which is designed to reward health improvement but may penalise councils and their citizens in disadvantaged areas whose efforts to improve health may be frustrated more by the impact of matters outside their control than the policy decisions that they take. Those matters might well include government policies and, of course, the state of the economy.
There is also a question about how funding might be affected by the impact on children's services departments of the increasing numbers of academies and free schools opting out and taking away with them a proportion of the central support funding that the local authorities will apply.
We are in danger of moving from a national health service to a patchwork of fragmented health services, which will not be at all the same thing. The health service is of great utility to the people of this country. It is not a utility like gas, water or electricity—still less an insurance fund. It falls to this House to preserve the principles of the National Health Service and facilitate its continuous improvement in the service of the people.
Lord Fowler
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has just said, a constant theme of the debate has been the volume of public and professional objection to parts of the Bill. I do not downplay that, but such protest about change in health policy is hardly unique. The first health debate I took part in was as shadow Health Secretary in 1975, when I came from the peaceful realm of dealing with law and order, crime, police and prisons to the health service, and found the most horrendous row on pay beds taking place. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, will remember that as he was Health Minister at the time.
A few years later I took over as Secretary of State and stayed for six years, which is something of a post-war record. I would like to claim that this was a period of unparalleled peace, but this House has certain standards of honesty and frankness. The lesson I learnt from those years was that any change or reform in the health service almost certainly comes up against the implacable opposition of the BMA and the other health unions—and, very often, of the Opposition. When I introduced general managers, there was a fierce row. When I introduced a manpower policy, there was a fierce row. When I introduced contracting out, it was regarded as the work of the devil; and a proposal to have some very modest partnership between the public and private sector at district level was described by Michael Foot as,
“the most serious attack on the National Health Service since it was originally started”.
The worst attack was when the BMA and the pharmaceutical industry combined to attack my proposals to save on the drugs bill by substituting cheaper, generic drugs for branded sleeping pills and tranquillisers. The BMA said that it was an unacceptable interference in the freedom to prescribe, and the pharmaceutical industry said that I was the worst kind of socialist. Even then, the party opposite voted against me. Perhaps it was the word “socialist” that they did not like. Needless to say, none of the policies has been overturned in the 25 years since. My point is that we should not be amazed at the noise and criticism accompanying any set of changes; that has always been the case. Having said that, I acknowledge that many issues raised in the debate are of genuine concern. Those of us who care about the future of the health service want to see them settled. The question is how that can be done.
What would be entirely unacceptable is for the Bill—by any standards a major government Bill—to be defeated by this House at Second Reading. I was a Member of the other place for 31 years and accountable to the electorate. When I came to your Lordships' House, my position changed. This House has great expertise, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, has just shown, but it is an unelected House and should not on Second Reading substitute its own view of a major Bill passed by the elected House after an exceptional period of consideration. We were asked yesterday where the mandate was for this legislation. The mandate comes from the elected House—from MPs who are elected and accountable. Frankly I am amazed that the opposition Front Bench supports the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, because my argument is exactly the kind of argument they used in government on issues that were much less important.
The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, spoke, is nearer the mark. The question that they raise is not new. In many ways, it is the eternal question of the National Health Service. How, when one has an almost entirely tax-funded service, with an obligation on the Secretary of State to answer to Parliament on how money is being used, does one at the same time achieve maximum devolution for the service to be most effectively managed? I do not deny that there is an important issue here that we should consider. What I doubt is whether we require a special Select Committee to examine the issue. The normal committee processes of the House would be sufficient.
In the time available, I will make three quick points on why I support the Bill. First, any Government have an absolute right and duty to ensure that the enormous resources being devoted to the health service are properly used. We can debate by what percentage health costs go up each year, but we are now spending more than £120 billion a year on the health service. By any standards, that is a vast amount of money. What one wants, particularly in the light of an ageing population and the certainty of new treatments coming on stream, is to see that the service is well managed—and I do mean managed. It serves no purpose to refer to the many excellent managers in the health service as bureaucrats and administrators. We should value their skills in the same way as we value those of the clinicians and doctors.
The second reason I support the Bill is that it explicitly recognises that not everything needs to be run by the health service. Fair competition is not an alien concept but something that applies to every other profession in this country. I do not want to wreck the political careers of the noble Lords, Lord Warner and Lord Darzi, but I agreed absolutely with what they said yesterday about this. Fair competition should ensure the best possible service. Equally, the use of the private sector does not mean that one is privatising the service; that is one of the oldest and dreariest charges. We are committed to a taxpayer-financed service, but making sensible use of the expertise of the private sector is what any modern public service should do.
My third and final reason for supporting the Bill is that it potentially contains—I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said on this—one of the most important steps forward: the creation of Public Health England, with a ring-fenced budget. I have just finished chairing a Select Committee of this House on HIV and AIDS. One of our findings was that at the last count, in 2009-10, the Department of Health spent £762 million on the treatment of HIV—mainly on drugs—and £2.9 million on prevention. The trouble is that people do not march up and down Whitehall or block Westminster Bridge carrying banners saying, “Prevention, prevention”. The public demand treatment. The tragedy is that so much treatment could be avoided, as in the case of one man who wrote to me after our report saying that he was on the verge of suicide when he was diagnosed with HIV, and even today is receiving psychiatric care: a casualty of a failure to prevent an entirely preventable disease.
There has already been a long debate on this Bill. Unless we are careful, we will leave the health service in uncertainty about the future. We will leave it in suspended animation. I do not believe that anyone who is committed to the National Health Service wants to see that. My belief is that this Bill should now be given its Second Reading and that we should proceed to scrutinise it in Committee with the skill and care that this House has always shown.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
My Lords, no one could dispute that the NHS needs to change to meet its challenges, drive up quality to be universally good, and narrow health inequalities. The way to bring the benefits of research and innovation to people's health, whatever their condition, is for the NHS constantly to change and evolve. But if it is more fragmented by external ownership, any irreversible damage may not be evident for several years. The real concerns about this Bill are neither a resistance to change nor vested interests. They come from all quarters because there are so many changes to the NHS in the Bill and so many needed changes that are not in the Bill. The more we ask questions the more we are told that secondary legislation will sort out the detail.
The key risks with this Bill identified by the impact assessment include whether clinical commissioning groups have the capacity and capability to engage with and deliver clinical commissioning and to manage risk, and how the Commissioning Board will deal with the potential conflicts of interest for GPs as providers and commissioners of patient care. As my noble friend Lord Kakkar said, Nolan principles and oversight of primary care need to be on the face of the Bill. With excessive autonomy, how will we avoid a patchwork of services, with rarer conditions left out in the cold? Planning of services has always required a critical mass of population, but how will that planning happen now? Will public health, the Commissioning Board or the clinical commissioning groups have the final say?
A real concern is for patients of all ages with complex, long-term, but not very rare conditions. Rare conditions will be centrally commissioned; common conditions are to be dealt with by GPs. In children, for example, conditions such as cerebral palsy, diabetes, Down’s syndrome or survivors of leukaemia are rare for a GP but not rare in paediatric practice. It is this middle group that risks falling between the cracks. Their real needs are for excellent, small-volume services. The choice—the real choice—they want is to have a service rather than no service or one restricted by stealth. Allied health professionals can be key, but where do they feature as core professionals? In the Nottingham area, we have already seen restrictions so imposed that they cannot practise properly.
Clinicians are used to rationing; the ethical principle of justice embodies it. Clinicians are also inherently competitive. It is their professional pride, not money in their pockets, that can be harnessed to drive up quality. We face the Nicholson challenge of savings and yet the impact assessment questioned the ability of GPs to deliver potential financial savings as well as transactional costs. There is also a question about how much this Bill is going to cost.
The Minister said that improving quality is motivating this Bill. But the NHS Confederation has said the jury is out on whether the Bill will actually improve quality. With more than 8,000 separate contacts, how can the Commissioning Board possibly manage primary care from a distance and monitor the quality and value of the service? The patient voice is a powerful driver to improve quality and it must be strengthened. We all welcome that. Patients’ feedback on their experience of care can change practice, so feedback from patients on the way complaints are handled and collated must inform commissioning. However, it is unclear how the Commissioning Board will discharge its responsibilities for involving patients, the public, and public health in its plans and decisions.
Let me turn briefly to “any qualified provider”. The hospice movement has provided this par excellence, sitting outside the NHS yet increasingly integrating. Where hospices have delivered best is where they have collaborated and integrated with the NHS, rather than competing fiercely for funding. I need no convincing of not-for-profit providers. However, people must have the protection of recourse to the health ombudsman, whoever the provider is—not only if it is the NHS—and every provider must have adequate indemnity.
My noble friend Lord Mawson spoke of the stifling barriers to progress when systems are not integrated and simple patient data are not available. There is a tension between collaborative integration and the possessiveness that can come from commercial competition. We must use our patient data better, not make it more difficult for them to be transferred. The personal profit motive can distort; incentives not to refer patients to other clinicians can cause delayed diagnosis. They neither achieve better quality, nor save money overall in the long term. It is good general medicine that decreases inappropriate referrals and ensures the best use of secondary care, and that requires closer integration of primary and secondary care, not less. The Government need to confirm that such integration will continue and be fostered under the proposed changes. We will meet our workforce needs only if the provision of educational and training resources is embedded in the contract with any qualified provider and is part of every tariff.
The duty to facilitate research must be strengthened in the Bill. Research drives up quality of care as well as contributing a financial benefit to the UK; when money is tight we need research more than ever. Change and innovation are essential for our health services to keep abreast of improved outcomes, to promote independence and to meet patient need. Change and innovation are driven by research. That is why universities and hospitals need to integrate more, not less.
In the past I have said that the NHS must stop being a political football. But removing so much responsibility from the Secretary of State feels more like abandonment. The recommendation of the Constitution Committee is that the Secretary of State's role be put beyond legal doubt. The suggestion of my noble friend Lord Owen seems to provide a good way to address this and to be time efficient. At the very least I hope that the Minister will agree to review this as the Bill proceeds.
I have kept asking whether we need this Bill to bring about the changes to drive up quality of care, improve outcomes, empower the patient voice and decrease layers of bureaucracy. The answer I have consistently been given is that the vast majority of changes can happen without the Bill and indeed the most important ones are already happening. I doubt whether this House will throw out the Bill, but it must amend it properly. At a time when we need to make savings and focus evermore on patient care, these reforms risk being an ever-increasing distraction for clinicians and managers. It is a credit to NHS clinical services that they continue to develop despite the uncertainty. Their concern that the NHS will not exist in five years time is driving their vocal opposition. People’s health is not a commodity to be traded.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, I should declare a non-financial interest as an honorary fellow of three of the royal medical colleges associated with the health service. One of my earliest clients was the Scottish branch of the BMA, and the first time I appeared as a counsel in this House—when the House had jurisdiction to deal with these matters—was as counsel for the Medical and Dental Defence Union. So I have had a fairly long interest in health matters, including the health service, up to the present time.
We have all had a good deal of correspondence about the profit motive in relation to the health service. It is worth reminding ourselves that the main suppliers to the health service, both of drugs and equipment, are powerful industries in the private sector, and therefore the health service has to be able to deal with these in an effective manner. But the main issue for me is that raised by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. Its report, as we have come to expect, is clear, comprehensive and concise, and the Government have given a full response. What are required now are decisions.
The principal issue is the effect of deleting from the statutory duties of the Secretary of State the first part of the provision in Section 1(2) of the NHS Act 2006 that:
“The Secretary of State must for that purpose provide or secure the provision of services in accordance with this Act”.
It is the taking out of the word “provide” that is a small but extremely important amendment. I agree entirely with the noble Lords, Lord Owen and Lord Hennessy, that this is a vital matter. The committee referred to the decision of the Court of Appeal in Coughlan in which my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf, then Master of the Rolls, said that the Secretary of State,
“has the duty to continue to promote a comprehensive free health service and he must never, in making a decision under section 3”—
which was an issue in that case—
“disregard that duty”.
What is important is that that duty in these terms does in fact remain in the present Bill. The Constitution Committee, which includes distinguished parliamentarians and very distinguished lawyers, has put that question in clear terms to us all. I do not believe, although I have the greatest possible respect for the great range of talent in this House, that any other committee could have put it better, more succinctly or more comprehensively.
Yesterday, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol referred to this as a “foundational” matter. I agree with that, and the sooner it is resolved, the better. The problem with the proposal of the noble Lords, Lord Owen and Lord Hennessy, is that, while I agree entirely with its importance, is the method by which it should be resolved. If, in truth, this is a foundational matter, it is very unusual to leave the consideration of the foundation to the end of the consideration of the structure, and that is what is going to be involved here. My submission to your Lordships is that the sooner the sting and toxicity coming out of this issue is removed from the consideration of the Bill, the better. I have every confidence that a full debate in an ordinary Committee of the Whole House will resolve it at the beginning rather than at the end of the process. However, according to the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, the rest of the Bill is to be considered without a decision on this point. But that decision is bound to affect all of the rest of the Bill, so consideration of the rest of the Bill is subject to a condition about its foundation, which cannot be effective. Noble Lords do not need to listen to the whole of the debate, although I have listened to a substantial part of it, to know that very important issues need to be debated in order to improve the Bill. Certainly I would like to see it improved to the best possible standard because the health service is the most precious system in our country. I personally am highly devoted to it and have now used it for long enough to have become one of the ageing population which is threatening to be a rather serious burden, although I hope that I will not be too burdensome.
The right way for this House to deal with this matter, in accordance with its ordinary methods, is at the proper place in the Bill. Whatever wrongs the Secretary of State has done—people are finding fault with all sorts of different aspects—at least this point arises at the beginning, the foundation, of the Bill. Surely this House should not lose the opportunity of dealing with it in its place, in accordance with the full and comprehensive issue put before us by our own committee.
I do not want to say anything about the issue itself at this stage, just simply that it is one of great importance which should be decided at the beginning, not the end, of the process. I hope that we will be able to decide it in Committee. It is always open to come to a conclusion in Committee, although many conclusions are reached on Report. But I would like to see this issue decided at the beginning of the Committee stage because it has the capacity to draw out a lot of the toxicity that is affecting consideration of the Bill. A lot of people have written saying that the whole of the health service is going to be damaged, lost and so on. We need to consider that and see what we can do to deal with it. I think that the Government have indicated in the other place that they would be willing to put this beyond legal doubt. The Committee has given us one way of doing that; namely, to go back to the way it was, in which case the legal doubt is resolved. But there may be reasons for not doing it which the Committee will have to consider, one of which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff; namely, that it is highly desirable to prevent the National Health Service becoming a political football.
I have a sad recollection of a general election in which the ear of a particular patient of the National Health Service was a political football for days. That does no good for any of us. Indeed, it denigrates our health service. I am not saying that this Bill would eliminate that for certain, but the object of this change in the early part of the Bill is to try at least to reduce the risk. Your Lordships will want to consider that, but I suggest that we do so as a matter of priority at the very earliest stage in Committee.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, I am going to be in a minority on these Benches by speaking in favour of the Bill, at least of one very small part of it, and that is Clauses 219 to 226 in Part 7 which create the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care. I welcome the changes to the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, the organisation I currently chair. The changes provided by the Bill will bring in new regulatory options for the health and social care workforce through the accreditation of voluntary registers, new areas of oversight in statutory regulation across social work and new funding arrangements. I support this package of reforms because they keep the interests of patients, service users and the public at the heart of the system regulating healthcare workers in the UK and social workers in England.
These provisions reflect evolving thinking about right-touch regulation and proportionate protection of the public. Giving the Professional Standards Authority the power to accredit organisations which have voluntary registers of health and social care workers but are not statutorily regulated introduces a new, cost-effective and flexible option for improving patient safety and experience. I also support the reforms because they allow for greater integration of health and social care regulation through our oversight function of the renamed Health and Care Professions Council, and of course the CHRE will be renamed the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care to reflect the broader scope of its work. Right-touch regulation promises less but better regulation, and I pay tribute to the nine health regulators and the staff of the General Social Care Council who have embraced the proposed changes, which are not necessarily easy for them to make in a professional and positive manner. That is the limit of my positive approach to this Bill.
I am a passionate devotee of the NHS. I grew up in the Channel Islands, where every visit to a doctor had to be paid for and where good health was, therefore, largely a function of your income. My grandmother was deaf because of neglected ear infections and my grandfather was killed in a road accident because he returned to manual work too soon after being in hospital for surgery, driven by the need to pay the bill. I owe my own life to the NHS through its intervention, pioneering surgery and medical expertise, and my continuing good health to the watchful eye the NHS keeps on me.
In addition, one of the great commitments of my working life has been about social care. It is too easy, as others have said, to overlook the fact that the Bill before us is about health and social care; and about enabling disadvantaged individuals, clients, carers and patients to speak for themselves and to contribute to policy formation. How I judge proposals for changes to health and social care, therefore, is simple: first, whether the new arrangements will lead to services that are more organised around individuals and more focused on patient need; and secondly, whether there will be more integration among the providers of care, whether health services, care services or indeed voluntary and privately provided service.
The emphasis placed on integration and collaboration by the Future Forum report was very welcome but I have yet to be convinced about how its proposals, as interpreted in the Bill, will lead to better integration across health and social care. As the Future Forum report reminded us, the provision of integrated services is rarely dependent on structural change:
“The reality is that the provision of integrated services around the needs of patients occurs when the right values and behaviours are allowed to prevail and there is the will to do something different”.
It is surely not hard to understand that since delivery of co-ordinated services depends on co-ordination between individuals, individuals are less likely to have the will to do something different when they are fearful about their own futures. This is not surprising, since the dedication and commitment of public sector workers is constantly undermined by some in our society and when they are worried about the service they love being dismantled and anxious about a future which seems to offer conflict between different types of vested interests instead of a focus on patient needs.
For the patients themselves, their fear and bewilderment is reflected in the huge number of communications that all your Lordships will have received. Is there anyone who really believes that the mantra of, “No decision about me without me” is going to be facilitated by the changes in the Bill? What patients want—and, I would strongly argue, what patients have a right to expect—are services across health and social care that are easily accessible, free from fears about affordability, and provide dignity, safety and peace of mind as well as treatment or cure. I pity any patient who is seeking those things in the mess the services now find themselves in. Patients always complain about the complexity of systems and about why one bit of the service does not seem to talk to another. The plethora of acronyms and layers with which they now have to contend is hardly going to help; and woe betide any patient who looks at the horrendous flow charts and diagrams of the new system.
I share with others the concerns that have been expressed about the lack of independence for HealthWatch, the potential conflicts of interest for local healthwatch organisations, the lack of proper transition arrangements between LINks and local healthwatch, and also the lack of real power for the health and well-being boards.
In addition, although some progress has been made towards coterminosity between consortia and local authorities, the populations for whom consortia will be responsible will be based on practice lists not geographical boundaries; so there may be all sorts of problems such as we have seen many times before with health and social care professionals trying to work across geographical and administrative boundaries, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has warned us.
However, my principal worry about the patient and public involvement issue—I repeat—is that all my experience shows that structural change does not bring about integration and collaboration, either within a service or across services. It is people and proper communication about the assessment of needs from the point of view of the patient that bring that about. The well intentioned changes that have been made as a result of the Future Forum work have actually led to systems and structures that are more complex and difficult to find your way around—even for the professionals who work in them, let alone the consumers.
We always—not only in these difficult times—have to face a balancing act between quality and affordability. Much mention has been made in this long debate of competition. Some say it drives up quality, and that may be true for some services. I can only say that in a lifetime of working in health and social care, I have seen very few commercial interests competing to provide preventive services or services for those with dementia or with a mental disability. Those have been left to the voluntary and community sector, who will scarcely be able to compete on a level playing field with the giant commercial interests currently circling our NHS. Unlike the voluntary and community sector, which has always subsidised these services, I doubt they would be circling unless there were some prospect of profit.
Anyone who has ever run an organisation knows you have to build a consensus if you want to bring about change—otherwise you spend too much energy fighting the change instead of facilitating it. However pressing the need for change in the NHS—and I have heard no noble Lord in this long debate argue against the need for change—the Government have utterly failed to build that consensus. All the communications we have received, and the large petition that I understand has been received today, are ample evidence of that. For the sake of patients and professionals—and the NHS which is so loved by us all—I hope that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, if carried, would give more time for building that vital consensus.
Lord Patel
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I hold fellowships of several colleges. As I am going to speak about medical research, I should also say that I am a member of the Medical Research Council and a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences—all of which is probably quite irrelevant to what I am going to say.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Winston that much of this Bill is probably unnecessary. However, we have the Bill, and I will try to focus on issues related to it. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, not only for the way in which he introduced the Bill but also for making time on several occasions to meet me to discuss issues that concern me. I am also slightly concerned at the number of hours he has been sitting in his place. I hope that he is doing sitting exercises to avoid deep vein thrombosis.
The Secretary of State, in his keynote speech at the Conservative Party conference, said: “On my watch, the NHS will not be privatised, fragmented or dismantled”. Judging by the huge amount of briefs, mail and e-mails that we have all had, the perception of those who work in the NHS, patients and the public is the reverse. If the reforms are to work, listening to those who work in the NHS and to patients is going to be important.
Advances in diagnosis and treatments in areas such as cell therapy, genomics medicine, molecular diagnostics, regenerative medicine, nano-medicine and focused ultrasound therapy—to mention but a few—will be available probably in the next 10 years. It will be expensive, but it will also require a reconfiguration of health services to take advantage of it as well as better evaluation of the effectiveness of treatments. In some parts of the country patients are already not benefiting from the latest diagnostics and treatment, particularly those relating to cancer. To contain costs, better strategies for public health will be required, including regulation of diabetogenic products marketed in the high streets. The burden of lifestyle and environment-related diseases is huge and increasing: it accounts for nearly 40 per cent of in-patient admissions.
We also need more effective management of patients with long-term conditions, ideally in the community, delivered in an appropriate environment by skilled healthcare professionals. These patients are vulnerable and their experience of healthcare is often variable. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, that we have lost an opportunity in this Bill by not having developed a strategy for delivery of treatment for patients with long-term conditions.
I agree that we need change. But is the scale of reforms proportionate, appropriate and timely? Will the many layers of increased administration that the Minister referred to lead to confusion, bureaucracy and increased costs? Some estimates suggest that there may well be between 25,000 and 30,000 people employed in the NHS Commissioning Board, the CQC, Monitor and the 350-odd clinical commissioning groups, none of whom will be involved in the direct provision of patient care. The NHS Commissioning Board alone may have upwards of 5,000 employees.
I turn now to some of the points raised by other noble Lords whose comments I support. Yesterday’s best advice to the noble Earl, as it was put, came from the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough. Later I shall have another piece of best advice for today. However, the noble Lord, Lord Willis, was right to say that establishing the health research authority is crucial. I also hope that the Bill will provide stronger support for a duty on all healthcare providers to be involved in promoting clinical research. I will therefore support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Willis.
My noble friend Lord Walton of Detchant expressed strongly the need for the UK to be recognised internationally for good medical training. The Bill’s proposals on the role of health education in England and of the regulator of medical education and training, the General Medical Council, cause confusion. Nothing should be done to change national training programmes. I hope that my noble friend Lord Walton will bring forward amendments that others will be able to support.
Equally, the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, referred to several important issues relating to the training of nurses, nurse support workers, the representation of nurses on national bodies and safe staffing ratios. I will support her amendments. As a clinician, I understand very clearly that good nursing care makes patients better. She also mentioned Cause 231, but I am sure that she meant Clauses 225 and 226.
The strategy for delivering the public health agenda needs to be strengthened. There is a risk that, as currently drafted, the structures will not deliver the improvements that we need. There is also an issue about the public health workforce. I hope to have amendments on that which I hope will be accepted as a way of improving the delivery of the public health agenda.
The Minister referred to public and patient involvement. If the Government are serious, HealthWatch England should be given a stronger voice. It should be an independent body and not a committee of the CQC; it should be represented on the boards of the NHS Commissioning Board, Monitor and the CQC; and it should be well resourced. That is today’s best advice. I will table an amendment to propose that and I hope that the Minister will accept it.
The noble Earl’s key ministerial responsibility is for quality in healthcare, which is defined as effectiveness, patient safety and patient experience. The quality standards developed by NICE will be the key drivers of quality in the NHS. To be effective, they need to be based on the patient’s journey of care, as I learned when developing quality standards myself. The noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, is not in her place so I will save her blushes. I wrote her a letter on 16 October 1997 and enclosed a paper on behalf of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, of which I was then the chair. The purpose of the paper was to establish a three-pronged approach to improving quality of care through the use of quality clinical indicators; a strategy for developing clinical effectiveness and the accreditation of clinical services licensing through peer review; and, to do this, to establish a body called the national institute of clinical effectiveness. I am glad that it survives as NICE.
The quality standards developed by NICE will be the key drivers of quality in the NHS. They need to reflect the patient’s journey of care and to be used by the national Commissioning Board to develop currency—currency which will be used by Monitor to develop tariffs. The tariffs need to be bundled to deliver effective, integrated care that will result in good outcomes. The pricing has to be appropriate, and therefore should be reflected in the tariffs that the commissioners will use to purchase care.
However, I have to ask why there is such a convoluted way of developing tariffs. Why is there the involvement of the national Commissioning Board, Monitor and the commissioners? The NICE quality standards used by the commission could be simplified, and social care could be included.
The quality regulator, the CQC, will be responsible for making sure that the providers of healthcare follow the quality standards, but the methodology will need to be refined. The best way of assessing healthcare and monitoring quality is through peer review, as experience in other countries such as the United States has shown—and in England we also have the example of cardiac and thoracic surgery. The 300 to 350 clinical commissioning groups will use tariffs to purchase care. Good commissioning has been patchy. The Bill is unclear how that will be developed. How will conflict of interest by primary care doctors, as providers of care, and members of the commissioning group be managed? I have an issue with quality premiums—what they will be used for and the criteria for awarding them.
Performance management of GPs as providers of care is also not clear. When will we have a primary care outcomes framework? I hope that GP referral rates will not be used as indicators for quality payments. We already have evidence that for many patients, particularly cancer patients, late referrals produce poor outcomes. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, spoke yesterday—movingly and courageously—about her own family experience.
I think that Monitor as a sector regulator has too many tasks that it need not have. However, one task that it should have is as a financial regulator of social care. Healthcare regulation is complicated; it is not comparable to utilities regulation. Evidence presented at a recent seminar showed that successful regulators are simple regulators.
Time does not allow me to comment on other important issues related to competition, choice, integration, the failure regime and reconfiguration, which are important issues. Some of them have already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, who I hope to join with in the amendments that he brings forward. No doubt we shall have an opportunity to discuss this in detail later.
As many noble Lords have commented, this is a complex and large Bill. I hope that the business managers will recognise the need to allow appropriate time for the Committee stage. In common with other noble Lords, my intention is to improve the Bill, make the delivery of healthcare in the NHS better, and build on what is already good.
Baroness Donaghy
My Lords, we all have direct experience of the health service, some good and some not so good. Like most noble Lords I support change. I would like to go on to a hospital ward and find someone in charge. I hope that no one else will have to go through the obscene ping-pong of an elderly dependent relative going backwards and forwards between care home and hospital, not knowing what is best for them, but having them regarded either as a bed-blocker or a health risk.
Of course we need improvements, but it is vital that our own personal prejudices do not get in the way of the overall picture. To pretend that this Bill will solve any or all of these issues is to present a false prospectus. Despite raising these matters, we still do not know how failing organisations will be dealt with, how we will prevent GPs from abusing financial incentives, or how local authorities will be able to afford to set up elaborate new structures. We still cannot work out how the word “streamlining” can be used in the context of more committees, more overlap and more cost. Asking us to agree to this Bill is not just asking us to walk into the unknown, which is fair enough—innovation is good—it is asking us to dismantle our home beforehand.
If this were 1997, things were so bad there would have been popular support for any change, even a rotten one like this, but we are not in 1997. Things are different now. Enormous resources, self-respect, massive innovation and professional incentivisation have changed the agenda. We are now trying to protect what has been achieved. I was once involved in appointing new consultants. It was one of the most exhilarating of experiences. The new generation is chock-full of talent, is aware of the importance of outcomes and does not think that money grows on trees. We are so fortunate in our health service staff, and we should be praising them and taking them with us. As a former chair of ACAS, I know that consent is what leads to better productivity. I say to my noble friend Lady Wall that of course health service staff want certainty. They have wanted it for 63 years, and they are not going to get it. Do not be tempted by the seductive words that any decision is better than none. I have a friend who has worked in the health service all her life and is now on her 24th reorganisation. I am not saying that uncertainty is good or desirable in itself but, as the NHS constitution says, the NHS belongs to the people. As long as that is the case, politicians will always tinker. The alternative is that they might not belong to the health service any more and might be on worse conditions and have inferior pensions.
Yesterday the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, spoke of the burdens of ministerial office in the Department of Health, and I have no doubt that all Ministers work way beyond their best capacity. However, I believe that she obfuscated the true meaning of ministerial responsibility by emphasising day-to-day business and micromanagement, and her Tesco analogy really let the cat out of the bag: there is a national Commissioning Board if ever there was one. Some towns have so many Tescos that they are campaigning against them. Its success was built at the expense of the small provider—the local shop—and suppliers so desperate for contracts that they would enter into deals of slave-like proportions. Yes, quality was improved, but it was achieved by pushing down the exploitation to the lowest level.
Let us be clear: we are all in favour of better integration of services, but I think there are yawning gaps in the Bill about how social care will be treated. This subject is not new. In 1968, there was the Seebohm committee report, the health Green Paper and the Royal Commission on Local Government in England—the Maud report. In the debate on the Seebohm report in this House, Lord Amulree said:
“There is a need for a link between the residential homes … and the hospitals … This is something which does go wrong at the present time”.—[Official Report, 29/1/69; col. 1180.]
Amen to that 43 years later. That comment was made when most residential homes were run by local authorities. If it was difficult then, how much more of a challenge will it be under the current set-up? I believe that care homes are a scandal waiting to happen.
What of the Government? The Prime Minister is to be admired for two reasons. First, he has the luck to have one of the most talented Ministers in this House to present this Bill. The noble Earl can truly make this “Titanic” look like Roman Abramovich’s yacht. Secondly, I admire the Prime Minister for his loyalty to his friends and, in particular, his friend Andrew Lansley. I share the same birthday as the Prime Minister, although, unfortunately, not his age, so perhaps we share that value, but the Secretary of State’s stubbornness is now a liability, and the Prime Minister should consider whether personal friendship is more important than running the country.
What is this Bill really about? It is about two things, and they are simple and stark, so they have to be wrapped up in lots of packaging. First, it is passing the ration book to GPs so that they get the blame. Secondly, it is laying the groundwork for the privatisation and dismantling of the National Health Service.
I shall finish with a quotation from Benjamin Disraeli. It is not:
“England does not love coalitions”,—[Official Report, Commons, 16/12/1852; col. 1666.]
or even his comment on the Liberal Government of the day:
“You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes”.
It is this from February 1851:
“I read this morning an awful, though anonymous, manifesto in the great organ of public opinion, which always makes me tremble: Olympian bolts; and yet I could not help fancying amid their rumbling terrors that I heard the plaintive treble of the Treasury bench”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/2/1851; col. 602.]
In a previous speech, I compared the health service with Little Red Riding Hood, with the noble Earl as an unlikely wolf sitting in bed with a frilly nightcap and speaking with a soft voice. When you consider how to vote, beware not only the big, bad wolf but, under the bed, the plaintive treble of the Treasury Bench.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, when one comes near the end of a debate in which almost 100 Members of your Lordships' House have spoken, one has a good deal of time to think about what one might say when the time comes. I must first start by declaring an interest. From the time I left college until March last year, I worked in the health service, first as a junior doctor, then as a consultant psychiatrist and then as an executive medical director of South and East Belfast Health and Social Services Trust, one of the largest health and social care trusts in Northern Ireland. I retired at the end of March. During that time, when I came home from work I did not stop talking about the health service because my wife is a consultant histopathologist. If my children felt that when their aunts and uncles came at least that would be a relief, it was not. All of those who work outside the home in my generation, on both sides of the family, work in healthcare: in academic medicine; in laboratory medicine; in general practice; in dermatology; in psychiatry; and in child healthcare. It runs through our family’s veins in this generation. When I retired last year at the age of 55, I did so with a very heavy heart because in the early years I could see that in the area that I was committed to—people with mental and emotional disorders—every year I could look back and say, “There was a little bit of improvement this year. Things are moving forwards a little bit. There was a little bit of better care for the people who need it”, but that was not the case in the last years.
The noble Lord, Lord Owen, in a very powerful speech, rightly said that the health service will always be a rationed service because there is an endless possibility of using resource, but he then went on to say that people trust the health service because it is always fair. I wish that were true. For those who live at a considerable distance from the metropolis, for those who have certain kinds of disorder, for those who are very young, as we heard yesterday in terms of child and adolescent services, and for many of those who are old, there is not an entirely fair distribution of resources, so we must always be thinking about how we can make it better, and I know noble Lords would not disagree with that.
The sense for me was that things were not improving. The sense was of low spirits. It is an anxiety that I detect in the many people who have contacted me by e-mail and letter and in the many speeches in your Lordships' House in this debate. Why are people so anxious? Is it just because every time there is talk about making any change in the healthcare system people get anxious? Look what happened to Hillary Clinton and President Obama when they tried to address the healthcare requirements in their country and, frankly, make it better and a little bit more like what we have been privileged to have in our country—yet they found that people were terrified even by improvements in service. Perhaps that is part of it. My noble friend Lord Fowler has identified how every attempt by parties on either side has always been met with anxiety. Some people would suggest that we are receiving this deluge of messages because campaigning organisations now have the capacity to deliver them with enormous sophistication and speed. Maybe there is some truth in that, but it would be wrong to think that it did not represent a real anxiety and concern.
Why are there these anxieties from, for example, clinical colleagues? We need to go back a little. When general management came in, it was not Roy Griffiths’s intention to move away from involving clinicians in management. He subsequently made that clear in the early 1990s. He did not want a separate profession of managers, but I am afraid that many of my medical colleagues, and other clinical colleagues too, said: “We do not need to get involved with that. We will just get on with the clinical work, which is really what we want to do”. It is a seductive argument. Many managers also thought that it was much easier to manage if these people did not keep coming up with difficult clinical conundrums for them to address.
Over many years it got to a point where many doctors and other clinicians felt that they had no way into the management. That was one of my problems. I was left on an evening with a psychotic, suicidal patient whom I knew could not be managed in the community, but as a doctor I could no longer admit them to a hospital bed without going through an administrator who knew nothing about the patient and nothing about the situation, yet was telling me I had to keep them in the community and manage them however I could.
That has left doctors in such a position that—even though the previous Government put lots more money into the service, for which I commend them, and increased the salary of doctors, for which I guess they are to be commended to some extent—it did not improve output and efficiency. It did not even improve the morale of doctors. Most people of my age—I am 56—want to retire early from the National Health Service because they feel impotent to make the kind of changes that they want.
How do we address that? We find a way of bringing back together clinical involvement and the management of the service. Management is not a dirty word, but clinical experience and involvement is necessary if it is going to be good and effective. Not everybody will welcome that. It is much easier for a doctor just to go to his clinic and have no sense of responsibility for the implications of his clinical decisions, either for his particular patient or for all the rest of the patients and community. However, I am afraid it is the responsibility of clinicians to do that. It will not be easy for managers. I am sure they are happier whenever clinicians stay at bay, but these are issues that have to be addressed. We have to face their difficulty if we are to have a better health service.
Another dilemma was that things became more and more centralised, with more targets, regulations and directives coming from the centre, to address these problems. But many of them cannot be addressed from the centre. You have to involve local people—patients, carers and elected representatives. That is why the purpose of this Bill is to get clinicians back involved with management, localities, patients and carers through health and well-being boards, HealthWatch and other facilities involved in the process. And yes, colleagues should also compete with each other, not on the basis of price but—as the noble Lords, Lord Warner, Lord Darzi and Lord Birt have made clear—there is a value in people measuring themselves against their medical and clinical peers to see whether their performance and the production of their service is the best it can be.
I see the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, shaking her head. She approached me some time ago in the run-up to this Bill to ask if we could get together and have some workshops and seminars to make noble Lords aware of all the issues. Some colleagues said it was a trap and I should not get involved—that the noble Baroness was trying to split the Lib Dems off from the Conservatives. I said I did not believe that and that she genuinely wanted to achieve familiarisation with all the issues, almost as a kind of do-it-yourself pre-legislative scrutiny. We got involved together and it was useful work. So when she said in her opening speech in this debate that there were a series of things she welcomed and would go on to discuss in Committee, I thought it was absolutely wonderful. Then she said that she would support not having a Second Reading. I thought that it would be a bit difficult discussing them in Committee if we did not actually get to a Committee.
However, that is what we have to do. We have to get to Committee to make sure we make the best possible Bill. What would happen if it was tossed out? What would be the message to the people in the health service? No clarity, no direction, no possibility of actually approving it on the Floor of Parliament. Some people have said that we do not need a Bill and many of the things could be done away from the Floor of the House. However, then there would not be good scrutiny or the facility for proper debate that people could engage with. Some of these changes also require legislation. It is extremely important.
The noble Lord, Lord Owen, and a number of colleagues have said that a number of constitutional questions need to be addressed. That is true. There are constitutional questions that have not been touched upon. Noble Lords would not expect me to ignore the fact that, when the health service was founded, there was a United Kingdom with a single health service and a little side-bar to Northern Ireland. Now there are four health services. There have been constitutional changes that have to be addressed, but this debate shows us that the richness and understanding of the whole House is needed to address these constitutional questions. As the noble Lord, Lord Owen, made clear, it is not possible to determine how long a Select Committee might meet and it could drag things out over a considerable period.
I appeal to colleagues that we get on with our business, which is not to defy the other place but to scrutinise the legislation ourselves together on the Floor of the House. I have one final request to my noble friend. It is crucial that he makes clear when he speaks that the Secretary of State—not someone else—will retain the responsibility and the accountability and be the ultimate guarantor of a National Health Service that we can all be confident in, not anxious about its future.
The Archbishop of York
My Lords, let me declare an interest in this Bill as a previous patient of the National Health Service. In 2008, suffering salmonella as soon as I arrived from overseas, I was treated for nine days at University College London. I received excellent treatment. It was co-ordinated and first rate. In May 2008, at St Thomas’s Hospital, I was admitted and stayed for 12 days for the removal of a rather nasty appendix. I was looked after well, it was well co-ordinated and wonderful. In August this year, at York Teaching Hospital, I was treated for repairing my rotator cuff and removing my uvular because it was affecting my throat. It was fantastic and well co-ordinated.
All three hospitals are teaching hospitals. The question that we need to ask ourselves is: will this Bill raise and improve the standards in our teaching hospitals? I am doubtful because if you are a teaching hospital it means that sometimes things may be delayed and may not happen so quickly. They have to work hard. Will it improve the teaching hospitals of our country? I am doubtful. My Archiepiscopal colleague, the most reverend Primate of all England, Dr Williams, in the New Statesman on 9 June in a speech on education said:
“With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted. At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context”.
A number of noble Lords have repeated the same view: that the Bill has no mandate. It was not in the manifesto. It will not do simply to repeat the statement that it was in the coalition agreement. Joe and Jane public did not vote on it. That is why there is anxiety in the nation and that is why there is a lot of worry about it. Therefore, the Government would be wise to persuade the public, the professionals and most of all the staff of the NHS that it is in their interest.
The best way of doing that is to allow proper scrutiny of the areas that have caused the greatest anxiety. From listening this morning, I think that the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, does that. The area of anxiety that it addresses is the extent to which the Secretary of State is still responsible, and it allows parliamentary counsel to help in the scrutiny of that particular part.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, agrees with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol that the role of the Secretary of State is a foundation issue. The Secretary of State has responsibility for the health of the nation. He said that since this is a foundation question, we had better deal with it quickly. But will time allow us properly to examine the foundation and secure that the foundation is good? It does not seem to me that in the short time available we will do that. Time will run out and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Winston, that this will not improve the National Health Service. It may do other things but health is somewhere else.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal
My Lords, with the leave of the House I would like to speak in the gap. Your Lordships will be relieved to know that I will be very brief.
I have had the privilege of listening to this debate for much of yesterday and most of this morning. It is clear that it is one of the highest quality debates in which we have had the privilege of participating in this Session or indeed for a number of Sessions that I have been privileged to sit in your Lordships' House. Rarely have I heard the level of concern, commitment and indeed love for any particular institution. It is clear that the NHS is loved: not just valued, but genuinely loved.
The issues therefore that the House has been grappling with in many ways surround some of the legal consequences of the changes that we are minded to make. Those are difficult and challenging issues. Your Lordships will know that I sat where the noble Earl, Lord Howe, is sitting for many years. Therefore, it is my estimation that this difficulty is likely to take a great deal of time on the Floor of your Lordships' House. I hear with great care the powerful statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, that we can deal with this in our normal way and that it is part of the raison d'être of this House. I understand why he says that, but, frankly, I disagree. There will be a level of acuity that we will have to address to this particular issue that will be quite difficult to do on the Floor of the House.
We need calm, we need sagacity and we need careful contemplative consideration. That is often done away from the public eye and the public glare so that people can say what they genuinely think in a way that will benefit this House. We wish the issues between us to be narrowed so that we can focus only on those things with which we have to deal. I respectfully suggest to the House that that could be more conveniently, effectively and critically dealt with to the benefit of this House’s debate and much more importantly to the benefit of the people of our country, who will be listening with real anxiety about what this House does. It would be easier to deliver what our country needs if we entrust that duty to a Select Committee which we know will have the commitment and belief of all of us if we give them that opportunity. I therefore ask the House to consider very carefully whether we would not be better placed to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Owen and Lord Hennessy.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, somewhat unexpectedly, I find myself seeking the leave of the House to speak in the gap. I have a string of interests to declare including being chair of a health trust and a long history of being chair of health trusts and in other ways for something like 25 years.
Am I a supporter of the Bill? Yes, in general. Can it be improved? Yes, for certain. That is what we should be thinking about doing. There are three substantive points that I want to make briefly. Change in the NHS, as my noble friend and others know quite well, is a process not an event. These changes are already well down the track. In my view, it would be too late to stop them without causing total and complete chaos. If they are delayed, by whatever route, that will do more damage to the NHS, which we all much love, than if we get on with it.
In relation to the desire to refer part of the Bill to some kind of committee, I do not know about other noble Lords but I have been deluged with representations from professional bodies, every kind of association and a lot of individuals. There is ample evidence of people's views to be taken into account by this House in the ordinary way in its deliberations in Committee. That is what we are good at. That is what we have shown we are good at on the Localism Bill, the Public Bodies Bill and no doubt soon on the Welfare Reform Bill. Let us get on and do our job.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, two minutes before time. I first declare an interest as chair of the Heart of England NHS Foundation trust, president of the Royal Society of Public Health, the British Fluoridation Society, and the Health Care Supplies Association, a health policy consultant and trainer with Cumberlege Connections and member of the National Advisory Council, Easy Care Foundation. But I speak for the opposition Front Bench.
The noble Earl enjoys huge respect in your Lordships' House. I well recall the many debates over four years that we have had across the Dispatch Box in which the noble Earl from this position cautioned me about the ill effects of the continuous restructuring of the National Health Service. Yet it is on the noble Earl’s watch that the health service is now facing the most turbulent time in its history. It is unsought after by patients, in direct contradiction of Mr Cameron's pledge of no top-down reorganisation of the NHS and is driving a coach and horses through the coalition agreement, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, reminded us yesterday.
At the end of this wonderful debate, there is one question above all others that I and, I believe, many other noble Lords, want to put to the noble Earl. It is simply the question, “Why?” Why, when the NHS is facing this huge efficiency challenge of finding £20 billion, is it being diverted by this disruptive reorganisation? Why are millions of pounds being wasted on redundancies and the set-up costs of the new system? And why, when the Government inherited the NHS in the best condition it has ever been, are they tearing the whole service up by its roots?
I say to the noble Earl and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, that I did not recognise the health service that he talked about. We should go back to 1997, when we inherited the Conservatives’ Patient’s Charter. Noble Lords may recall that this aimed for a maximum of 18 months’ wait for hospital appointments. They could never achieve it, but we did—and more. Eighteen months tumbled to 18 weeks—a crumbling edifice was transformed into hundreds of new hospitals and there was a major emphasis on improving health outcomes.
We developed the Expert Patients Programme, national service frameworks to improve integration of services, and accessible services such as walk-in centres and NHS Direct. I do not apologise for referring to what my noble friend Lord Winston said about the verdict of the US think tank, the Commonwealth Fund. It singled out the NHS as top of the class, in the one country where wealth does not determine access to care, since it provides the most widely accessible treatment at low cost. I must say I was very disappointed that, when the noble Earl’s department was asked to comment on that assessment, instead of lauding the achievements of the NHS, it scratched around to identify problems. That was very disappointing indeed.
Yesterday, in his careful speech, the noble Earl sought to justify the Bill because of rising demand and treatment costs, and the need to improve efficiency and outcomes in areas such as stroke and some cancers. He is right; these are considerable challenges. But I repeat the question asked last night by his noble friend Lord Tugendhat: why did he not build on what he inherited? It was the Labour Government who enshrined patient choice in the NHS constitution; we introduced practice-based commissioning. Let me say to the noble Lords, Lord Kakkar and Lord Alderdice, that our disagreement with the Government is not about patient choice, it is certainly not about clinical involvement—I absolutely agree on the need for this—and it is not about devolved decision-making. My whole argument is with this expensive and bureaucratic reorganisation that they have determined on.
We all watched with interest the listening exercise and the deliberations of the NHS Future Forum, led by Professor Steve Field. It is true that the Government produced loads of amendments at a late stage in the other place. The problem is that those amendments, when combined together, proved to be of little substance. Let us take the Secretary of State’s responsibilities to provide comprehensive services. In this Bill, the Government will continue to water down those responsibilities. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, described that as foundational. Yesterday, the noble Earl said that the fact that the Secretary of State delegates so much responsibility to other bodies shows that the current legislation is not fit for purpose. The fact of that delegation is recognition of the Secretary of State’s responsibility to Parliament for the spending of more than £120 billion a year. When trouble arises, whether it is a public health disaster such as BSE, or perhaps a clinical safety issue such as occurred at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, it is the Secretary of State whom we look to to account to Parliament.
I understand why some noble Lords are attracted to this part of the Bill; they want to take politics out of the NHS and they want to prevent micromanagement by Ministers. But some of us are old enough to remember the glory days of the nationalised industries and the tension between the chairman of the board and the Minister responsible. In the end, it was the Minister who was always held responsible by the public. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, put his finger on it yesterday. He complained to Ministers through a parliamentary Written Question about the merger of local primary care trusts, and he found his complaint referred back for an answer to the very official who had driven that decision in the first place. The noble Lord had better get used to this because that is the architecture contained in this Bill. It is about Ministers evading their responsibilities. In the end, I would rather be overseen by a Minister properly accountable to Parliament than by a quango whose accountability is somewhat tenuous.
Despite the Future Forum, a huge gamble is to be taken with clinical commissioning groups. Billions of pounds will be given to GPs, without any proper accountability to the public or any expertise in major commissioning decisions. The doctor-patient relationship goes to the heart of general practice, but neither the Future Forum nor the Government seem to show any signs of understanding the ethical tension between the role of GP as champion of the patient and the role of GP as rationer of services through commissioning; and neither will patients. What are the potential conflicts of interest if the clinical commissioning group places contracts with GPs in their group, or the use—as we saw last week at the Haxby Group Practice in Yorkshire—by GPs of their NHS patient list to promote their own private services? What does that do to the doctor-patient relationship?
Then we come to the issue of competition and the role of the private sector. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hutton that both have their place in the NHS, provided that they are properly managed. I have no problems with that at all, but I do not want to see destructive competition put at risk essential collaboration between neighbouring hospitals or the cherry-picking of services, which could harm the viability of many of our NHS services. Nor do I want to see the loss of the altruism that is characteristic of so many people in the NHS. My noble friend Lady Kingsmill, former deputy chairman of the Competition Commission, said yesterday that competition red in tooth and claw has its limits. Does the noble Earl agree with that? On the issue of competition and the use of the private sector, at heart it is a question of trust, and in essence the Government are simply not trusted. I, too, share the concern raised by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that European competition law could bite in unexpected ways.
There is also real confusion about the role of the economic regulator Monitor. Yes, the Government have nuanced the role of the regulator, but it is still to be given anticompetitive responsibilities. As the King’s Fund has said, concerns remain about the extent of competition in the future NHS and its impact on integrated care, let alone on its relationship to social care. So the Future Forum has not changed the core principles. All that has happened is tinkering at the edges while sowing the seeds of great confusion in the NHS. We see a huge absorption of power by that giant of all quangos, the NHS Commissioning Board, so it is now going to get a massive slice of the commissioning budget, strong control of the clinical commissioning groups and direct contracting with every single GP, dentist, ophthalmologist and pharmacist in the country— thousands and thousands of them, all in contract with the NHS Commissioning Board. I am a great admirer of Sir David Nicholson, but I am alarmed by the lack of accountability of the board. It does not even need to meet in public.
This is just one aspect of a confusing and flawed architecture. What about the joint responsibility of the Commissioning Board and Monitor, the economic regulator, for tariff setting? It is clouded in ambiguity. What will be the relationship between Monitor and the quality regulator, CQC? With money tight and getting tighter, there will be an inevitable tension between the financial health of an institution and the safety and quality of services. Who will moderate that tension?
We now have the Francis inquiry into the mid-Staffs NHS trust. I would have thought that it might have important things to say about that. I would ask the Minister whether it would not be prudent to await that before rushing into these problematic changes.
We then come to the local level. Here the architecture is even more confusing. The King’s Fund has said that the major reconfiguration of hospital services is urgently needed for clinical and financial reasons. These are the real reforms that are needed today, but who will give them a green light? Yesterday, the Minister accused the last Government of creating layers of administration. That is a bit rich when you look at what he and his colleagues have created. Which body will sign off the reconfiguration of services at the local level? Is it to be the putative clinical commissioning groups, yet to be authorised, or the existing primary care trusts, or the extra-statutory clusters of PCTs that have assumed enormous power to themselves, or perhaps the local offices of the NHS Commissioning Board, which are an inevitability? What about the commissioning support units, another initiative, which apparently are to be set up in each area to support the clinical commissioning groups in their commissioning responsibilities, or the local authority health and well-being boards, which will be given enhanced roles in relation to commissioning, or perhaps the local authority overview and scrutiny committees, which will still be able to refer major service changes? The clinical networks will presumably want a say, and the clinical senates will certainly want to get involved.
The Minister said that he wanted to reduce bureaucracy and remove the vacuum in decision-making. These provisions do the opposite; they have created a monster where opportunities for delay and buck-passing will be legion. No wonder that almost every noble Lord who has spoken has called for more scrutiny. Should the noble Lord, Lord Owen, put his Motion to the vote, we will certainly support him.
I listened with great interest to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, who argued that because this issue of the powers of the Secretary of State are foundational, as he described it, if we were to accept the Motion proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, it would be difficult to deal with the rest of the Bill, because a vacuum would be there. But there is plenty for us to debate were the noble Lord, Lord Owen, to be successful. I would pray in aid the police Bill. The noble and learned Lord will recall that on the first debate, on the first day of Committee, the House voted to take out essentially the core clause in the Bill. We had many happy days debating the rest of the Bill, and I do not think that your Lordships found themselves at all inhibited by that.
Even at this late stage, I hope that the Minister will get up and say that he will accept the Motion from the noble Lord, Lord Owen. The Opposition are quite happy to agree with the usual channels the number of days that the Bill should be in Committee and we are quite happy to agree a date by which Committee stage should be completed. You cannot say fairer than that. I urge the Minister to accept that offer. Of course, it would be better if we had no Bill at all. Last week, 400 doctors and other medical professionals wrote to the Telegraph. They said:
“The Bill will do irreparable harm to the NHS … It ushers in a significantly heightened degree of commercialisation and marketisation that will fragment patient care; aggravate risks to individual patient safety; erode medical ethics and trust … widen health inequalities”,
and, waste much money”. And that was just the first paragraph.
That great Liberal, Sir William Beveridge, in his 1942 plan, envisaged a National Health Service covering all medical treatments. Aneurin Bevan presented his proposals in 1946, in this very Chamber, though in another place, and said that the NHS would,
“relieve suffering. It will produce higher standards for the medical profession. It will be a great contribution towards the wellbeing of the common people of Great Britain”.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/4/46; col. 63.]
The NHS has done this magnificently.
This morning, I and my colleagues received from 38 Degrees a petition containing over 135,000 signatures collected in a very short space of time asking this House to protect the NHS and to ensure that the Bill gets proper scrutiny. That is but one small reflection of widespread concern in the community and the NHS. Yes, the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, is right; there have been concerns before, when he was Secretary of State. Indeed, I hope that I was quite successful in orchestrating some of those concerns. But this is different. The scale of concern and mistrust among the public and the NHS is greater than I have ever known it before. Only this House now stands between safeguarding the NHS and these confused and damaging proposals. I hope that we will not fail the test that has been set us. I shall support my noble friend in the Lobby.
Earl Howe
I rise to conclude an excellent and constructive debate. It has been long, and the task that rests with me in summing it up in the space of 20 minutes is clearly an impossible one, if I am to do justice to every speaker. Therefore, I hope that the House will find it acceptable if I aim in my response to capture the main themes of this debate and to write to noble Lords whose specific and detailed questions I do not have time to answer. In addition, I am happy to offer any the noble Lord a meeting with me or with officials from the Department of Health to discuss any of the issues that they have raised.
To begin with what might seem an emotional and emotive point, it was said by more than one speaker, including the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, this morning, that the NHS is the nearest thing that this country has to institutionalised altruism. That is surely right. It is equally right that the NHS is a part of our national life, of which we can be deeply proud. At its best, which is often, it delivers high-quality excellent care. The investment made by the previous Government has contributed significantly to that.
A number of noble Lords asked why, therefore, the Government’s reforms are needed at all. Part of the answer to that is about the clear imperative around the quality of care, about which the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, and my noble friend Lord Black spoke so powerfully. Indeed, we have excellent care in the NHS, but sadly this is not universal. The variations in quality and outcomes and longevity around the country are too great for us to sit back and do very little. But there is another less visible reason. In a sense, the need for reform is not about how excellent the NHS may be today; it is about our making sure that in five, 10 and 20 years’ time the NHS is still there as a sustainable public service, free at the point of use, delivering the care that we all want it to.
The financial challenge facing the NHS is acute. We have protected its budget in real terms, but that is not going to be enough to meet demand from an ageing and growing population unless we take some radical steps to simplify and streamline the NHS architecture and to free up the service from central control in a way that will drive innovation and productivity as never before. That is the purpose of these reforms and this Bill. It is not just about today; it is about safeguarding the future. If I had one criticism of some of the contributions from the Benches opposite it was of their failure to acknowledge the scale of the financial and quality challenge that now faces us. Money will no longer grow on trees in the NHS; we have to think out of the box. So we are seizing on the evidence of what works in order to drive quality—namely, empowering commissioners. We are cutting the cost of NHS administration by one third, and we are trusting the men and women of the health service—including, incidentally, our many excellent managers—to deliver what we know they can, which is an even better service for their patients. And make no mistake—there are doctors and nurses and managers out there who are keen to get to grips with this. Yes, of course, there are many who have no appetite for change, and there are many critics and doubters. But I have met so many clinicians that I cannot count them, who believe that what we are doing is right, and who are being inspired by these reforms to lead the way in the local pathfinder groups and in local authorities.
The NHS needs continual renewal. It has never stood still, and it cannot do so now. The noble Lord, Lord Darzi, put it perfectly when he said:
“To believe in the NHS is to believe in its reform”.
Many speakers, most prominently my noble friend Lady Williams and the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, have spoken about accountability in the role of the Secretary of State. For me, the debate on this topic crystallised into two issues. A number of speakers aligned themselves with the Select Committee on the Constitution in questioning why we have removed the Secretary of State’s duty to provide. There has been concern that this means that the Minister’s ultimate accountability for the NHS is in some way diluted. I can reassure the House that this is not so. A change as pointed out by several noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and my noble friend Lady Bottomley, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, is to reflect a fact which has been the case for many years; namely, that the Secretary of State does not directly provide services himself.
Under the Bill, the Secretary of State will continue to have a statutory duty to promote a comprehensive health service, and a duty to use his powers to secure the provision of the service. As has been the case for decades, it does not extend to the Secretary of State directly providing services. So rather than pretend that somehow the Secretary of State is responsible for all clinical decision making in the NHS, the Bill recognises that expertise for such decisions must sit with those health professionals closest to patients. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Marks put it well when he pointed to the means by which Secretaries of State will be able to do this; namely, the mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board, the standing rules, and the failure intervention powers. I may say that the improvements that my noble friend suggested to these powers sounded interesting to me, and I look forward to discussing these with him in greater detail at a later date.
The noble Lord, Lord Owen, asked what would happen in the event of a pandemic. If I could direct the noble Lord to Clause 44 of the Bill, he will read of the extensive powers the Secretary of State has to take control in an emergency—and this even extends to foundation trusts, which is a power not available to Ministers today.
The second issue raised with regard to the Secretary of State turns us to Clause 4, the duty of autonomy, and I am sorry that what I have said on this has been the subject of concern. My noble friends Lady Williams and Lord Marks highlighted this clause as raising the possibility that it will lead to an unacceptably hands-off approach on the part of the Secretary of State. We do not think that that is the case. However, I would like to repeat the commitment made by my honourable friend the Minister for Care Services at Report stage in the other place, about Clause 4, namely that,
“we are willing to listen to and consider the concerns that have been raised and make any necessary amendment to put it beyond doubt that the Secretary of State remains responsible and accountable for a comprehensive health service, which we all want to see.”—[Official Report, 7/9/11; col. 454.]
If there is an amendment which will improve the Bill, we will make it. This offer stands, irrespective of how the House votes on the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and I hope that this gives reassurance to those who have been concerned on this point. I also today commit to host a meeting with all interested Peers—including the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, if she wishes—to discuss any matters around accountability further so that we can all better understand each other’s positions and concerns, but also inform Committee discussions on these vital issues.
The second concern I would like to turn to is that of competition. Many speakers, such as the noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy and Lady Billingham, fear that the Bill could lead to an American-style market free-for-all, with competition harming patients’ interests. Others, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, have claimed that we are actually doing too much to shackle the benefits of competition, and that we should look at removing some of the safeguards that we have put in place.
Let me be clear about what the Bill does and does not do. The Bill does not introduce a free market for all. It does not change competition law, or widen the scope of competition law. It does introduce a framework in which competition can be effectively managed as a means to benefit patients. That competition can work in the interests of patients is well backed up by academic research, such as the studies quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, on mortality rates, and by noble friend Lady Cumberlege on inequalities. The Bill does not do anything which might or could lead to the privatisation of the NHS. What it does do is create a level playing field between different providers, putting an end to the subsidies and guarantees given to the private sector under the last Government.
The Bill will not mean that competition will trump integration. The safeguards and duties that it places on Monitor, in particular its core duty towards the interests of patients, will ensure that Monitor supports integration. The balance that we have struck in this Bill, once more returns to the North Star—that graphic metaphor from the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar—namely, patients. We believe that competition has a place, but only as a means to an end, the end being to improve quality and efficiency.
The noble Lord, Lord Darzi, made the case, as usual, very strongly, by talking of competition as a means to spark creativity and light innovation. However, it does require safeguards to ensure that other factors such as integration, service continuity and the prevention of cherry-picking are given due weight—and those safeguards are there.
I turn next to concerns raised that the Bill creates too much complexity, meaning that care will be fragmented, and decision-making harder to achieve, and we heard that concern expressed this morning by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. Let me first be clear about the different organisations abolished and created by this Bill. The Bill abolishes the 151 primary care trusts, half of the national arm’s-length bodies, and the 10 strategic health authorities. It establishes clinical commissioning groups which are currently growing out of existing practice-based commissioning groups. Likewise, local HealthWatch will build on existing local involvement networks, and HealthWatch England will be situated within the Care Quality Commission. I can reassure the noble Lords that the Bill contains a number of mechanisms to ensure independence of HealthWatch both locally and nationally. Monitor will be expanded to become a provider regulator, and the NHS Commissioning Board, led by Sir David Nicholson, will be a new body, but it will draw on the best aspects of a range of departing organisations. We envisage that it will host the existing clinical networks and the new advisory clinical senates.
Concerns were raised that the board could have too much power over commissioning groups. I genuinely agree that the Bill contains sufficient safeguards against this, but I do of course look forward to discussing this issue further. Overall, administration costs across the health system will be cut by one-third in real terms by 2014-15—this will save £4.5 billion by the end of the Parliament alone—all to be reinvested in front-line patient care.
A number of noble Lords have asked who takes the decisions. This Bill represents a significant step forward by directly conferring responsibilities in statute, rather than having them all delegated in an opaque way through the Secretary of State. This clarity extends to how different organisations should work together and the Bill contains significant new provisions regarding collaborative working. In her opening remarks, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, expressed her support for health and well-being boards, which will be hosted by local authorities. Other speakers have endorsed the plans for joint strategies to be determined and agreed by all relevant local services. Many speakers have raised service configuration, which we can happily debate. However, I believe that the Bill supports effective, clinically led reconfigurations led locally but with the NHS Commissioning Board playing an important leadership role.
A number of speakers spoke about particular service areas within the NHS and how the reforms would impact on them. Let me start by reassuring noble Lords that those working in general practice will not be commissioning in isolation. Clinical commissioning groups must obtain appropriate advice from a broad range of professionals. This would, for example, include experts in mental health, children’s health, learning disabilities or other areas as appropriate. Given this duty to obtain advice, we do not think that it is necessary to expand the membership of clinical commissioning groups’ governing bodies further than is currently set out in the Bill, which was a suggestion made by a number of speakers, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol. Indeed, if all the additional representatives suggested in this debate alone were to join the governing body it would quickly become unwieldy and unworkable. Clinical advice would also come through other forms, such as clinical networks, which I can confirm to my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones will continue, and new clinical senates. These mechanisms should ensure that specialist advice at all levels of the NHS is there. They are not extra layers of bureaucracy.
Many speakers have stressed the importance of public health and health inequalities and the changes proposed by this Bill. I completely agree that these are fundamental issues. Our plans seek to create a new focused approach for public health, protected by a ring-fenced budget. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, asked a range of questions about the detail behind our arrangements and I will respond to her in writing. But in terms of inequalities, this Bill, for the first time, puts in place specific duties on key relevant bodies to act with a view to reducing health inequalities. That should surely be seen as welcome.
One or two noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, raised the removal of a foundation trust private income cap and feared that it could lead to longer waiting lists for NHS patients. I am confident that it would not have this effect. My right honourable friend the Minister for Health said on Report in the other place that,
“we are proposing to explore whether and how to amend the Bill to ensure that FTs explain how their non-NHS income is benefiting NHS patients. We will also ensure that governors of FTs can hold boards to account for how they meet their purpose and use that income”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/11; col. 289.]
I hope that provides some reassurance. I look forward however to further debates on that issue.
The future of both education and training, and research, were raised by a number of speakers. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, and my noble friend Lord Willis spoke passionately about the benefits of research. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and my noble friend Lord Ribeiro spoke equally passionately about innovation. As Minister responsible for research and innovation, I fully share this passion and I hope that I can reassure noble Lords that we are taking all necessary steps to ensure that we act quickly on taking forward the report of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, including future legislation.
Such legislation will also take forward the future arrangements for education and training but I can confirm to the House that we will table a new duty for the Secretary of State with regard to education and training in time for Committee. In addition, as both issues have attracted so much interest, I will ensure that new fact sheets on both topics are produced by officials in the Department of Health and made available prior to Committee. Again, my door is open to noble Lords to discuss any or all those issues.
Several noble Lords called for healthcare assistance to be given full statutory regulation. While I accept the need for action in this area, I cannot agree that statutory regulation is the best way to proceed. Our view is that employers of such workers have to take responsibility for the quality of services provided, including the use of existing systems. In addition, when tasks are delegated by qualified professionals, this has to be done with appropriate and effective supervision. I am of course more than willing to discuss this issue further as the Bill proceeds.
I turn now to the procedural concerns raised during the debate and to the Motions tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Owen and Lord Rea. First, a number of speakers questioned what they call the democratic mandate for this Bill claiming that the Bill’s proposals were not in manifestos or the coalition agreement. Both these claims are untrue, as any quick read of these documents will show.
What is true, as my noble friend Lord Rodgers pointed out, is that sheaves of documents covering every detail of policy were set out in July last year when we published the White Paper and associated consultation documents. This was followed up by a period of public engagement, a lengthy Government response, the listening exercise in the spring of this year and 40 sittings in Committee in the other place. At all stages, we have been open and transparent about our plans. This approach will of course continue and I welcome the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, in terms of ensuring effective post-legislative scrutiny. I can confirm today that while five years would normally elapse prior to post-legislative scrutiny of a Bill, we will bring that forward for this Bill to three years. As a result, I simply cannot accept the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rea. I respectfully suggest to your Lordships that to vote for that amendment would run directly counter to the proper role and functions of this House.
Secondly, concerns have been raised about what has been seen as implementation of the Bill’s proposals prior to Royal Assent. I suggest that this fear is unfounded. Preparatory work is ongoing to implement the Government’s plans, such as the creation of clinical commissioning group pathfinders. This is all within the current legal framework. However, such powers can get the reform only so far; hence the need for this Bill. For example, while early implementers of health and well-being boards are emerging all over the country, until this Bill is passed they lack all the statutory powers that we think are essential for them to operate.
Finally, I turn to the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Owen. I do not feel that a further Select Committee would add significant value to our normal processes. A Committee of the Whole House with all interested Peers, including constitutional experts in attendance, would in my view be the best forum to ensure effective and thorough scrutiny. Perhaps I may say that this Second Reading debate has amply proved that. My noble friend Lord Rodgers put it well in saying:
“The House is now able to make fully informed decisions … we should not duck … them further”.—[Official Report, 11/10/11; col. 1543.]
Furthermore, I agree with my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern that the early clauses of this Bill, which cover the Secretary of State’s duties and powers overarch the rest of the Bill. It is right for a Committee of the Whole House to consider them at the outset of the deliberations.
I engaged in discussions with the noble Lords, Lord Owen and Lord Hennessy, to see if there was a way to accommodate their proposals for a special Select Committee. The only way, I feel, that such a novel procedure could work would be to put a clear end point on both the Select Committee and the Committee of the Whole House. It is not sufficient to put a time limit solely on the Select Committee. This Session, all pre-legislative scrutiny committees set up in this House have required time extensions.
While the noble Lord, Lord Owen, says in perfectly good faith that the committee will report before Christmas, there is no way in which this House can make that truly binding without an end date on both committees. The key point is that if the Select Committee needed more time or if it recommended amendments affecting parts of the Bill—
Lord Peston
Is the Minister certain that there is no way that the amendment to which he refers can be made to work so that the job gets done in time? That bears no resemblance to my knowledge of how this House works. The House can end things at any time it wants to.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, in my experience, if this House wants something to happen it finds a way for it to happen. Even at this late stage, I ask the noble Earl to give careful consideration to this. I have already said from this Bench that we are happy to meet through the usual channels to agree a date by which the Committee stage will be finished on the Floor of the House. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, as far as he is able, will wish to say that he is happy for the special committee to finish by a certain date. I do not believe that it is impossible for agreement to be reached on this.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I very much welcome that offer, which has come rather late in the day. My understanding is that discussions over the timetabling of the Bill have taken place over the past week. However, we are faced with the amendment that is on the Order Paper and must vote on it as it stands.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
I beg your Lordships’ pardon but I have to say that we are and have been entirely open to this suggestion. I was not aware of it until yesterday. I give the House my pledge that the Bill will come out of Committee by mid-January, which is, I think, when the noble Earl was thinking of. We should be delighted to give our firm assurance that the Bill will come out in mid-January.
Earl Howe
My Lords, that is an extremely welcome offer, which we accept. I am grateful to the noble Baroness.
It is right for me to conclude, with your Lordships’ agreement. I bring this extended debate to an end by returning to the point of the Bill, which is to improve the quality of care for patients. For all the generosity of the noble Baroness’s offer, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, would not help patients. It would insert additional uncertainty into the parliamentary passage of the Bill. As my noble friend Lord Fowler rightly emphasised, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, would leave the NHS in far greater uncertainty. It would also leave it unprotected from both the present and future challenges that it faces.
Lord Rea
My Lords, after our marathon debate, I congratulate the noble Earl on his continued clarity and stamina, and the same applies to my noble friends Lady Thornton and Lord Hunt. Time presses, so I shall be very brief, although there are a thousand things that I would like to say in reply to the Minister and to those who have spoken.
I have sensed widespread unease about the Bill among your Lordships, and this alone would be enough to justify my calling for a Division. However, more than that, like all your Lordships I have also heard a tumultuous call from the country not simply to amend the Bill but to reject it entirely. I think that the Bill is virtually unamendable—certainly in the timetable that we have been offered, even if it were extended, and even if the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Owen, were accepted. Whole swathes of the most senior members of my profession want the Bill to be sent back to the drawing board so that the National Health Service can get back to work without a sword of Damocles hanging over it. How can the Minister expect to get high productivity from a disaffected workforce?
I end by quoting Sir Roger Boyle, the retiring National Director for Heart Disease and Stroke, whose work was praised by my noble friend Lady Andrews yesterday. He says:
“All the improvements in cardiovascular care have come from collaboration and leadership. Where is the evidence that competition between commercial providers makes a blind bit of difference to cost efficiency and quality? The competition I want to see is between clinicians vying with each other over whose service is the best. If you try and improve care by getting United Health to provide the service that would be crazy.
I absolutely think the NHS is the best public service in the world. It is horrific that its future is threatened”.
I ask noble Lords to accept my amendment, which asks the House to decline to give the Bill a Second Reading.
Lord Owen
As an amendment to the above motion, at end to insert, “and that a Select Committee shall be appointed to examine and make recommendations to the House on the issues raised by the 18th Report of the Constitution Committee, namely the Government’s and Parliament’s constitutional responsibilities with regard to the NHS, in particular to clarify (a) the extent to which the Secretary of State remains responsible and accountable for the comprehensive health service, and (b) individual Ministerial responsibility to Parliament, and to report on the extent to which legal accountability to the courts is fragmented; that this House requests that the services of Parliamentary Counsel be available to the Committee; and that the Committee shall report no later than 19 December 2011.”
Lord Owen
I shall try to be as brief as I can, but it is worth reminding the House that the procedure which I am advocating is not without precedent. On 8 March 2004 on the Constitutional Reform Bill, a Motion was moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, to leave out after,
“a Committee of the Whole House”,
and insert “a Select Committee”. I cannot avoid a little teasing by saying that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, voted for the Motion. Indeed, before he starts laughing, so did the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, a man I have the utmost respect for and who has given a very compelling speech, voted for it too.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
If I may say so, that was about committing the whole Bill to a Committee of the whole House and it is not, I think, a precedent for what the noble Lord is advocating now. It was quite different.
Lord Owen
I do not want the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, to escape either. Let me deal with that question. If we had moved this amendment regarding the whole Bill, everybody would have said that it was a blocking mechanism. Everybody would have said that we were effectively voting against Second Reading. It will not, I hope, have escaped the notice of noble Lords that I did not vote against Second Reading. Were I ever to vote against a Bill in this House, it would be after we had examined it and it is that examination which is now the question. Can we improve the Bill? So we entered into discussions to find a new way of dealing with it—it was done by my noble friend Lord Hennessy—and, to cut it very short, we reached a basic agreement on Wednesday night. We were asked to let the Government take this into consideration and we waited. In retrospect, we should probably have put the Motion down on Wednesday night.
We met again with the Leader of the House at 3 o’clock on Monday. The Leader of the House said, perfectly reasonably, that he could go along with this as long as he knew that the Bill would not be delayed. My noble friend and I said we thought it was absolutely reasonable that to protect the business of the House they wanted this Bill before the new Session. We had already made it clear that this would have to be reported out from Select Committee by 19 December, and that was acceptable. The clerks tell me they have to report it out. They may say they want more time but there has to be a report. So I think we have dealt with one of the problems.
The other problem was that we were not able to commit the House to the other date, which was when it would come out of the House. The shadow Leader of the House has made it very clear that if this Select Committee procedure went through, this Bill would finish its processes and come out by the middle of January. She was also generous enough to say that she would go along with a timetabling Motion that would not detract from the days given to debate on this. As far as possible, I thought it was understood that it would not detract from the days that were overall given to this House. It is for her to say, of course, because these are not matters that a Cross-Bencher can or should be involved in. However, it is reasonable for this House to explain that it needs a lot of consultation and a lot of time for this Bill. I am not going to get into the timing directly—maybe the shadow Leader would like to.
I would like to explain a little bit more about the thinking of my amendment and deal with the point about it being exceptional. When that Constitutional Reform Bill was referred, parliamentary counsel was made available to it. That is why in this Motion, and again it was discussed, we ask—because we can only make a request, but the noble Earl, Lord Howe, made it pretty clear that he would support it—that the services of parliamentary counsel would be made available.
Let me deal with the question of whether this is a better procedure than just leaving it to the normal procedures of the House, on the Floor. The most reverend Primate was correct when he argued why a Select Committee procedure would be the best way. A number of amendments need to be made to the Secretary of State’s powers and they have to be connected. It is a very complex and very long Bill. It is worth saying that this needs very careful study.
Now, what is this issue? The third leader in the Times today is entitled:
“The Bedpan Problem: Who’s in charge of the NHS?”
We all know the famous remark made by Aneurin Bevan that if a bedpan is dropped in a hospital corridor the reverberations should echo around Whitehall. We all know that this is an issue that has long faced the NHS, since 1948, and we all know that increasingly, with its complexity, size and the changes in medicine, the Secretary of State for Health could never manage the health service. I have made it clear that I think this problem has to be dealt with and some adjustment of what is said, even in the 2006 Act, might not be unreasonable, but it would have to be coherent; it would have to be put together by parliamentary draftsmen who know the Bill. I think that would cut down the amount of time we might wish to spend on the Floor of the House on this particular issue. Goodness knows, there are a number of other issues that will need a lot of time to give this full coverage.
Those noble Lords who genuinely think that they will get more out of a procedure on the Floor of the House should look at what happened to the amendments that were moved in Committee in the House of Commons on this question. Not a single one was accepted in the initial stages; it was only when the pause took place. That is already unprecedented. I agree there should not be delay but a matter of a week or two is a little rich coming from a Government who are responsible for taking it out of Committee in the House and having a long consultation. I praise the work of the forum.
The medical profession has had a good go at this Bill and I am not complaining about that. I do not want to be on the Select Committee myself. The work should be carried out by people with a legal frame of mind and a constitutional frame of mind who are used to looking at a Bill as a whole and trying to bring some coherence to it. That is what lay behind the thinking of myself and my noble friend Lord Hennessy.
This is not a delaying measure. If I was opposing the amendment, I would be saying that it was a delaying measure but it is clearly not. Two dates have been agreed. If it goes to a Select Committee, it has to report back by 19 December and if it goes to the Floor of the House simultaneously that will not cause delay. The shadow Leader of the House has given her word that in those circumstances—she stressed “in those circumstances”—the Bill would come out by the middle of January. There is no delay so let us not have that argument. It is a perfectly fair argument for people who wish to spend time on the Bill purely on the Floor of the House. I believe that this proposal would supplement the scrutiny of this Bill.
There is another issue I wish to draw attention to, particularly for those who have not been in the debate. We need to remember that an all-party Select Committee of this House unanimously reported to this House its concerns about this Bill. Those words and its concerns are reflected in my amendment. They are not my words—they come directly from the Constitution Committee. We also had on the morning of the debate a letter from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, which should be read by those who think that by using normal procedures changes will be made on this issue. He said about the Bill,
“the Government does not believe that this in any way diminishes ultimate ministerial accountability or responsibility for the NHS. Indeed we believe the measures set out in it strengthen and make accountability and responsibility clearer than it has ever been. We do not consider any amendments necessary to put this matter ‘beyond legal doubt’”.
You have to be a super-optimist if you think that you are going to get great changes. Only the weight of an all-party and probably unanimous Select Committee will give the weight to make this change.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
I apologise to the noble Lord and the House for not being here yesterday to listen to the debate. A member of my family spent yesterday in the care of the National Health Service and I felt it was more appropriate that I was with her than here.
The case by the noble Lord that lies behind this amendment is that a Select Committee is better than the Floor of the House in dealing with a Bill that comes to us which is defective in certain ways. He draws a comparison with the House of Commons but surely that does not take into account that the House of Commons is not constructed as we are constructed and does not have the same role as we have. Our role is as a revising Chamber. I say to the honourable Gentleman—forgive me, I mean the noble Lord—that I find it difficult to understand why a Select Committee of which few of us can be members will be better at holding this Bill to account than dealing with it in the circumstances of this House where all of us can be involved.
Here is the question. If it is the noble Lord’s case that a serious and complex Bill brought to us in a defective manner from the House of Commons is not able to be dealt with on the Floor of this House but must go to a Select Committee, what on earth is our function?
Lord Owen
It would have been easier if the honourable Gentleman—I mean the noble Lord; I am used to thinking of him in another place—had been able to spend the time here and heard the debate. I do not want to delay the House. I gave way to him because, as a former Leader of the Liberal Democrats, it is important that his voice should be heard but this is a question for the House as a whole and I do not wish to delay any longer. I leave this for the judgment of the House.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I crave the indulgence of the House to confirm one point that was clarified by the noble Lord. I do not advocate any timetabling Motion: that would not be appropriate for the House. I give the assurance that, were the noble Lord’s amendment to be agreed, my Benches would wish the Bill to be out of Committee by mid-January. However, if the amendment is not accepted, it will be right and proper for the usual channels to discuss the appropriate number of days needed in the light of this excellent Second Reading debate. I cite the excellent speeches made by many noble Lords, including the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, who spoke before me last night and who said that enough time must be given. He is absolutely right. I have no intention of delaying the Bill. My intention is to ensure that there is proper agreement between the usual channels on the appropriate amount of time that the Bill needs in Committee.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I will make three very brief points. The provisions that the noble Lord, Lord Owen, asks us to send to a special Select Committee affect the entire Bill. The twin-track approach that he advocates carries a major risk: the potential disconnect between the special Select Committee and the Committee of the whole House. The Select Committee might recommend amendments to parts of the Bill that have already been debated by the Committee of the whole House. The result could be that, notwithstanding the offer made in good faith by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, we could see a slippage of the timetable of the Bill that would be most unwelcome.
I repeat my assurance that I am entirely open to considering the concerns that have been raised about the issue and to make any necessary amendment to put it beyond doubt that the Secretary of State will remain responsible and accountable for a comprehensive health service.
Rural Payments Agency
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Renton of Mount Harry
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they consider that the work of the Rural Payments Agency is being of assistance to the farming industry.
Lord Renton of Mount Harry
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I declare an interest.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)
My Lords, the RPA undertakes a number of important regulatory functions, including livestock tracing and inspections, as well as making payments totalling £2.2 billion each year to farmers and traders, supporting sustainable agriculture and the countryside. Over the past year, important steps have been taken towards turning the RPA into the customer-focused agency we all wish to see. Costs have been reduced while customer satisfaction scores have increased, and good progress has been made in tackling some of the legacy issues.
Lord Renton of Mount Harry
I thank my noble friend the Minister for that. I agree with him that the Rural Payments Agency, which used to be chaotic, is a good deal better and more sensible now than it was then. One could go further. Perhaps I could suggest to him that the big question now for the RPA and for Defra should be: how will British farmers be affected in the common agricultural policy reform that will happen in two years’ time, when the new EU budget comes into force? Doubtless, there will be a lot of struggling at that moment as to who gets what. France is likely to end up with much more than England. Is this not an area where first-class thinking and planning should start now if our farmers are to be paid anything like the Rural Payments Agency money that they get at the moment?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I would like to think that I can reassure my noble friend that of course we shall bring first-class thinking to the challenge of this issue. This is not the listed topical Question, but it has certainly turned out to be topical because the Commission published its proposals for the reform of the CAP this morning. We are certainly going to be very much engaged in the negotiations and discussions that will take place around these proposals. Our priority will be to ensure that reform encourages competitive and sustainable EU agriculture through a system that is simple and transparent for both farmers and the RPA to operate.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, to his much deserved ministerial appointment. In this House, we knew him to be a flexible listening Whip, and we look forward to more of the same in his ministerial guise. I also want to record our thanks and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, as he moves on to the Home Office.
The Rural Payments Agency has had its ups and downs over the past few years, but it performs a crucial role in getting payments from the common agricultural policy to farmers. Your Lordships have just heard that the EU Commission announced reform to the CAP this morning. Like the NFU and the CLA, we on this side are disappointed that these proposals from the Commission are a missed opportunity. The rhetoric of radical reform has turned into a tired compromise, letting down both UK farmers and our natural environment. Given that consensus, what promises can the Minister make to farmers, and to others concerned about the natural environment, that the Government will use what influence they can muster from the margins of Europe to improve this reform as it goes through the Council of Ministers?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I thank the noble Lord for his kind words. I am afraid that, as a departmental Minister, the room for flexibility is perhaps not as great as it was, but I shall do my best. We have been building alliances within the European community on CAP reform. I think many other countries will be just as disappointed as we are with what appears to be a very retrograde and regressive proposal from the Commission at this stage. Our job is to negotiate, as the noble Lord rightly said, to try to build alliances and to place not just the farmer or the countryside but even the consumer interest at the fore. That is certainly our position. That is what we intend to do, and I hope we have the support of the whole House in achieving that.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Taylor on his accession to the portfolio which he dealt with in opposition with such competence and in his usual friendly manner. I look forward to him holding this job for quite a long time because he will do a very good one.
Because of other things going on this morning, I have not had a chance to look in detail at the proposals from the Commission, but does the Minister agree that it is very important to prevent the opinions and forces in this country that would like to abolish the common agricultural policy and the payments altogether? They are not the way forward. Without a reasonable level of support to British farmers, combined with the cross-compliance conditions on the environment and animal welfare and the Pillar 2 schemes, such as the environmental stewardship schemes, the British countryside would be a much worse place.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Undoubtedly my noble friend is absolutely right. That is the purpose of our discussions, that is what our focus will be in negotiations, and that is why we are going into the negotiations in a positive frame of mind: to try to achieve the changes to the CAP which we think are in the interests of the people of this country.
The Lord Bishop of Wakefield
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the Minister on his appointment. We on these Benches have found that he has always been very helpful and flexible. I was encouraged by his initial Answer to the Question but, as he will know, difficulties with the Rural Payments Agency have led to significant levels of stress. I gather that the Farm Crisis Network estimates that 55 per cent of its cases of problems and issues have come from the single farm payment. What lessons have been learnt from these experiences to ensure that these problems are not repeated?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
We have treated this from the beginning as a very serious focus of interest. My right honourable friend Jim Paice has headed up the oversight board, which meets every six weeks and monitors progress, and there is no doubt that the performance of the RPA has improved remarkably. It is not perfect, but it is getting there, and I hope that people will acknowledge that.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, what has been the principal factor in securing this higher efficiency within the agency? Has there been a contribution from Workington?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
From Workington? I am sorry; I should have realised the noble Lord’s connection, and I apologise for not picking that up. I am sure there has been a contribution from Workington, but there has also been a contribution from many other people involved in making this body a more responsive, speedier and easier-to-use organisation for farmers.
Energy: Gas Supplies
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland)
My Lords, National Grid published its Winter Outlook 2011/12 report on 11 October. Its assessment of UK gas security of supply for the coming winter is broadly benign, with lower domestic production being offset by the expectation of more imports, especially of liquid natural gas. The Government will work closely with National Grid and the energy industry to monitor the ongoing energy supply situation during the winter months ahead. We will also be publishing the statutory security of supply report together with an assessment of the security of supply risk in the gas market later this autumn.
Lord Ezra
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reassuring reply. Nevertheless, things can go wrong, so what is the Government’s policy on gas storage capacity? Our current capacity is now well below that of continental countries, has fallen back in the past year and is the one big reassurance we could have if supplies should be interrupted during critical winter periods? In the longer term, when will our demand for gas, 60 per cent of which now has to be imported, be reduced so that we are less reliant on the vagaries of the import market?
Lord Marland
Let me continue in the spirit of bonhomie and welcome the noble Lord’s return—
Lord Marland
I obviously recognise his strong track record of expertise. It is normally about this time of year that the House has a searching Question from the noble Lord and I am grateful for it. I can also assure him that this Government are deeply committed to storage. We inherited seven storage units for 16 days’ supply, we have four under construction and we have granted planning permission for another nine storage units. We take this matter seriously.
As for the other question about European gas storage compared with ours, we have to remember that 40-50 per cent of our gas supply comes from our own resources, 20 per cent comes from a dedicated pipeline from Norway and we have a good relationship with Qatar, with a guaranteed 10 per cent from there. So we are not in the same position as, perhaps, Germany, which is dependant upon the Eastern bloc for its supply. We get less than a half of one per cent from that source.
Baroness Worthington
Does the Minister agree that one way of reducing our dependence on imported gas is to invest in renewable forms of heating fuels? When will the long-awaited renewable heat incentive be open for business? At this rate, it will not be ready for people to invest by next winter, let alone this winter.
Lord Marland
I think the noble Baroness touches on the problem of Europe agreeing our tariffs for the renewable heat incentive where we propose aggressive and supportive tariffs for people in biomass and creating biomass boilers. They were rejected by the European Union, which said that they were unfair. We have looked at them again in earnest and certainly by the end of November we shall have responded to the EU with a negotiated position. We are deeply committed to it. As the noble Baroness rightly pointed out, it is fundamental to our energy security supply that we wean ourselves off oil in particular and coal, which are no longer supplied by ourselves.
Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes
My Lords, to depart briefly from the bonhomie, will my noble friend tell his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy from me that it took me three months on two separate occasions to change from British Gas to another supplier? To say that people are lazy not to change means that what happens in the real world is completely beyond his comprehension.
Lord Marland
The noble Baroness is of course known for her energy and it is not surprising that she is playing the markets. We completely agree with that. It is amazing what happens on the internet these days. This is obviously a matter for Ofgem, we are concerned that it frees up the markets so that the noble Baroness and all of us can take full advantage of competitive terms out there. Rest assured, we march shoulder to shoulder in a bonhomous way, even if she does not think so.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
The Minister referred to the National Grid’s winter outlook report and called its assessment benign. What it actually said was that the total energy supply this winter should be manageable under normal conditions. Given the complete inability to provide accurate long-range weather forecasts and the wild fluctuations in weather we have seen, what discussions has he had and what arrangements are in place with the National Grid and energy supply companies to ensure supplies should weather conditions not be normal?
Lord Marland
The noble Baroness is right. We had a very abnormal winter last year. As she has clearly read the National Grid report, which I am delighted to see, I direct her to page 33, which clearly sets out the various pressure points in terms of a cold winter, a variable cold winter and so forth and how we have coped with it. I am glad to say that, broadly speaking, we came through with flying colours from a gas point of view. That is not to say that we can be complacent: we must not. We have a serious task to make sure that everyone in this country is supplied with gas and oil in an awkward winter and I assure noble Lords is that this Government will not be complacent.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, in his Answer to the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, the Minister referred to gas supplies from Norway. Does he envisage that the proportion of gas imported from Norway will increase and how does he see the future of LNG from Norway in the future?
Lord Marland
I do not think that it will increase from the dedicated pipeline. But we have spent a lot of time—and the previous Government should be credited for this—upgrading our LNG ports so that they can attract LNG from every source. We are reliant on 10 per cent of our supplies from the world market, and Norway almost certainly can be part of that.
Health: Charities
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord James of Blackheath
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to extending the cost-saving work of health charities by providing them with NHS premises free of charge.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, health charities make a significant contribution to the NHS and are valuable partners. We are keen to support initiatives that will help them make cost savings and to support them through this challenging financial period. It is for local NHS organisations to decide to whom, and in what circumstances, they can offer NHS premises at concessionary rates.
Lord James of Blackheath
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer, which is encouraging in the context of local interests. But does he agree that some charities carry a case for a nationwide intervention due to the huge savings that they can produce, such as the Connect aphasia/stroke charity of which I am myself a rescued case? I was rescued so well that I married my therapist; I understand that that is an option, not an obligation. In this case, will my noble friend consider whether the huge savings that can come by removing aphasia cases from a dependence on welfare handouts and enormously expensive treatment could be alleviated by support being provided from the social care allocations fund on a completely cost-effective basis? The money could be replaced afterwards by giving some nominal recognition back to the fund as a consequence of the huge number of cases that would be saved by the charity.
Earl Howe
My Lords, we greatly value the work that Connect and other charities carry out, working alongside people with aphasia and their families to develop communication and rebuild confidence. I can tell my noble friend that we understand that the current fiscal position is presenting voluntary organisations and charities such as Connect with challenging funding issues. But, in the end, we are looking at local services. Where local services are concerned, it is the responsibility of commissioners—currently primary care trusts and local authorities—to commission services based on their local population needs. They must ensure that the services that they secure for local people provide the best value for money and quality for patients. I am afraid that we cannot get away from the value-for-money question. It is important to emphasise that we are sending the message to local authorities and PCTs that the voluntary sector should not shoulder a disproportionate share of funding cuts.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff
Will the Minister ensure that healthcare charities that provide clinical services have the same VAT exemption as NHS providers, to establish the level playing field at this time of financial stringency that the Minister spoke about in the preceding debate?
Baroness Thornton
Will the Minister confirm that the Department of Health has a strategy for encouraging and supporting charities, social enterprises and mutuals, both as patient and carer advocates and as providers of healthcare? In addition, would the Minister care to say how that policy might be enacted by the proposed commissioning structures in light of, for example, the failure of Surrey Community Health—a local and qualified social enterprise—to win a very large contract, losing it to Richard Branson’s Virgin Healthcare?
Earl Howe
I agree with the noble Baroness that it is important we do not lose vital local services that achieve high-quality outcomes. We shall be working with PCTs, therefore, in the transition to the new arrangements between the NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups as they develop, to ensure that the sector’s contribution to improved public health and social care is fully recognised. In the end, however, she will appreciate from our preceding debate that these matters will continue to be determined at a local rather than a national level—and it is quite right that they should be—because centrally we are not aware of local circumstances in the detail that we should be.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My noble friend the Minister will be well aware that there is a chapter in the health Bill on public involvement. Will he accept that there is a general perception that at present there is extraordinarily little attempt made by the health bureaucracies to engage particularly small local charities, which often have more to give in terms of public involvement than the very large ones?
Earl Howe
It varies. I am well aware of some PCTs that are engaging very creditably with voluntary organisations, but I am sure my noble friend can give examples of where that is not happening. I can only say to him that the policy of any qualified provider should mean that local voluntary organisations that can provide services to the quality and terms that the NHS requires should be in with an equal chance of providing services. We will ensure that proper guidance is issued to make sure that happens.
Human Rights Act 1998
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
Yes, my Lords. However, as the noble Lord will be aware, the Government established an independent commission to investigate the creation of a UK Bill of Rights in March 2011, thus fulfilling a commitment made in the coalition’s programme for government.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. The manner in which this important issue was not so much debated as debased last week by senior Cabinet Ministers was frankly infantile and not worthy of the serious matters involved. For a more serious consideration of the debate, may I urge the Minister and perhaps all Members of the House to read the article by my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine of Lairg, published in today’s Guardian? The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have both said, and I quote the latter’s words, that,
“the Human Rights Act needs to go”.
Does the Minister agree with his right honourable friend the Home Secretary?
Lord McNally
One of the problems about party conferences is that the newspapers like to heighten and find clashes between Ministers. I am old enough to remember it said that every time Harold Macmillan returned from a journey abroad Rab Butler was at the bottom of the steps to grip him warmly by the throat. The Government’s policy is very clear, and the Home Secretary and Justice Secretary are on exactly the same page on this. The commission will investigate the creation of a UK Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. It will provide interim advice to the Government on the ongoing Interlaken process to reform the Strasbourg court ahead of the UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe. That is the Government’s policy.
The Archbishop of York
Does the Minister agree that much of the criticism of the Act is based on ill-judged statements and decisions by public authorities, rather than what the European Convention on Human Rights actually says and what the courts in this country have decided in applying the Act? Does he endorse the plea of Sir Walter Scott in The Fair Maid of Perth, “Touch not the cat”?
Lord McNally
I am not sure that I would call in evidence Sir Walter Scott on this, but the Government have very clearly in the programme for government, set the commission the task of looking at the Act and how it is operating. We have given it a parallel but equally urgent task; we are using our UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe to push forward an agenda of reform of the working of the court. Both are extremely useful exercises and, when both are completed, we will be able to make a proper assessment of where we go next.
Lord Brittan of Spennithorne
My Lords, does my noble friend recall that the European Convention on Human Rights derives largely from the work and suggestions of Conservative Ministers in the late 1940s and that, although individual decisions may be uncomfortable, the general thrust of giving effect to human rights through legislation of this kind is one that reflects well on this country and provides a good example for others?
Lord McNally
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, referred to the Guardian article by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine, in which the noble and learned Lord says that,
“the main proponents of the European convention were Conservatives, including Churchill and Macmillan. The convention was substantially the work of British jurists in a tradition going back to the Petition of Right of 1628 and our own Bill of Rights of 1689”.
Baroness Greengross
My Lords, in declaring an interest as the second lead commissioner on human rights in the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I ask the Minister for reassurance that the Government will, in any look at a Bill of Rights, not go back on the basis of the Human Rights Act but build on it—that they will look at some of the controversial workings of the Act, which need looking at, but not take us backwards. It is very important that we are all committed, as I think we all are, to the basic human rights principles.
Lord McNally
Again, I can do no better than to quote the coalition agreement, which says:
“The Commission will investigate the creation of a UK Bill of Rights that incorporates and builds on all our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, ensures that these rights continue to be enshrined in UK law, and protects and extend our liberties”.
Lord Irvine of Lairg
While acknowledging the Minister’s own commitment to the Human Rights Act, are there not at least double standards at work, or worse hypocrisy, when the Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet preach the virtues of human rights and respect for the rule of law abroad while trashing these self-same virtues at home?
Lord McNally
I think that those are rather strong words. I have said before that in a democracy where there is a separation of powers there can be a healthy relationship between parliamentarians and the judiciary, whereby parliamentarians can sometimes express concerns about how the judiciary has interpreted some of Parliament’s Acts and, likewise, the judiciary may occasionally pass an unkindly word about the behaviour of parliamentarians. As long as that is kept on a basis of mutual respect and due courtesy, it is a healthy way for a democracy to go.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
Does my noble friend agree that it would be wise for all of us to be careful how we speak?
Lord McNally
My Lords, that is a piece of advice that I hope echoes and re-echoes down the Corridor.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
With that advice, I am not sure whether I ought to ask this question, because I am a member of the Commission on a Bill of Rights for the United Kingdom, so I must choose my words with great care. Is the Minister aware that the Council of Europe has commended the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve, as a model for Europe; and is he aware also that, across the common law world, we alone have reconciled effective remedies with respect for parliamentary supremacy?
Lord McNally
It does not surprise me that that is the reaction. When we set up this commission, indeed when we announced that we intended to take a vigorous attitude to reform of the court, we were told, “Oh, it’ll never work—you will get nowhere with this”. The fact is that we have found an increasing number of countries around Europe which have appreciated that we are taking a proper, sensible, calm look—through the commission on which my noble friend sits—at how the act is working in practice, and we are taking to Europe some very practical proposals for how to get the court working more efficiently and thus more respected. If we get away from all the showbiz of this, and get down to what the Government are actually doing, you will find that it is something that should have the approval of colleagues on all sides of this House.
Protection of Freedoms Bill
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Patrick Finucane
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, with permission I shall now repeat a Statement made by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the other place.
“Following my Statement to the House last November, in relation to the murder of Mr Patrick Finucane, I have considered this case very carefully. I want to set out today how the Government intend to proceed.
The murder of Mr Finucane, a Belfast solicitor, in front of his family on the 12 February 1989, was a terrible crime. There have been long-standing allegations of security force collusion in his murder.
The former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Lord Stevens, was asked to investigate the murder in 1999. He published his overview report in 2003, concluding that there was ‘collusion’, that the murder ‘could have been prevented’ and that the original investigation of the murder,
‘should have resulted in the early arrest and detection of his killers’.
When he was asked by the previous Government to consider the question of a public inquiry, Judge Cory found in 2004,
‘strong evidence that collusive acts were committed by the Army ... the RUC ... and the Security Service’.
My right honourable friend the Prime Minister invited the family to Downing Street yesterday so he could apologise to them in person and on behalf of the Government for state collusion in the murder of Patrick Finucane. The Government accept the clear conclusions of Lord Stevens and Judge Cory that there was collusion. I want to reiterate the Government’s apology in the House today. The Government are deeply sorry for what happened.
Despite the clear conclusions of previous investigations and reports, there is still only limited information in the public domain. That is why my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and I have committed to establishing a further process to ensure that the truth is revealed. Accepting collusion is not sufficient in itself. The public now need to know the extent and nature of that collusion.
I have, therefore, asked the distinguished former United Nations war crimes prosecutor, Sir Desmond de Silva QC, to conduct an independent review to produce a full public account of any state involvement in the murder. Sir Desmond is an internationally respected QC who will carry out his work completely independently of government. Sir Desmond has worked for the United Nations on major international issues in Serbia and Sierra Leone. In 2005, Kofi Annan appointed Sir Desmond to be chief prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In 2010, he was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to the independent fact-finding mission to investigate the Israeli interception of a Gaza aid flotilla. His track record in carrying out this work speaks for itself.
His terms of reference are to draw,
‘from the extensive investigations that have already taken place, to produce a full public account of any involvement by the Army, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Security Service or other UK Government body in the murder of Patrick Finucane. The review will have full access to the Stevens archive and all Government papers, including any Ministry of Defence, Security Service, Home Office, Cabinet Office or Northern Ireland Office files that [Sir Desmond believes] are relevant. The account [will be provided to me] by December 2012, for the purpose of its publication’.
I have agreed the terms of reference with Sir Desmond. I would stress that Sir Desmond is being given unrestricted access to these documents. He will be free to meet any individuals who can assist him in his task. It is, of course, open to Sir Desmond to invite or consider submissions as he sees fit. The review will have the full support and co-operation of all government departments and agencies in carrying out its work. I have spoken to the chief constable who has given his assurance that Sir Desmond will have the full co-operation of the PSNI.
This Government have demonstrated in the Bloody Sunday, Billy Wright and Rosemary Nelson cases that we will publish independent reports without delay. The same checking and publication arrangements will be put in place. This has been an exceptionally long-running issue. The previous Government sought to resolve this issue after the 2004 commitment to hold an inquiry but was unable to reach an agreed way forward with the family. I am disappointed that the family did not feel able to support the process that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and I outlined to them yesterday. I fully recognise that the family have pursued their long campaign to find out the truth with great determination.
We do not need a statutory inquiry to tell us that there was collusion. We accept that and my apology in the House today reflects this. The task now is to uncover the details of this murder. The public should not be kept waiting for many more years for the truth to be revealed. The Government have taken a bold step by asking an internationally respected figure to produce a full public account. Details in papers and statements that have been kept secret for decades will finally be exposed. The House will be aware of the extensive investigations that have already taken place in this case. I am clear that we do not need to repeat all the work that the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, has already carried out for the truth to be revealed.
The investigations into the murder of Patrick Finucane have produced a huge amount of material. One man, Kenneth Barrett, was prosecuted and convicted of the murder in 2004. Taken together, the Stevens investigations took 9,256 witness statements. The Stevens documentary archive extends to more than 1 million pages, and 16,194 exhibits were seized. This was one of the largest police investigations in UK history.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, carried out a police investigation to bring forward evidence for prosecutions. A 19-page summary was produced in 2003 but the Stevens investigation was not designed to provide a public account of what happened. That is why Sir Desmond de Silva will now have full access to the Stevens files and all government papers to ensure that the full facts are finally set out. The House will not want to pre-empt the details of Sir Desmond’s report. When the report is published the Government will not hide from the truth, however difficult. I strongly believe that this will be the quickest and most effective way of getting to the truth. Experience has shown that public inquiries into the events of the Troubles take many years and can be subject to prolonged litigation, which delays the truth emerging. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and I have made clear for some time, we do not believe that more costly and open-ended inquiries are the right way to deal with Northern Ireland’s past.
I am acutely conscious that the conflict in Northern Ireland saw more than 3,500 people from all parts of the community killed and tens of thousands more injured. We should never forget the many terrible atrocities that took place. More than 1,000 of those killed were members of the security forces. I want to be clear that the overwhelming majority of those who served in the security forces in Northern Ireland did so with outstanding courage, professionalism and even-handedness in upholding democracy and the rule of law. The whole House will agree that we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude.
The murder of Pat Finucane has been one of the longest running and most contentious issues in Northern Ireland’s recent history. The appointment of an internationally respected and wholly independent figure to produce a full public account demonstrates the Government’s determination that the truth about this murder should be finally revealed. The House will recognise the spirit of openness and frankness with which we are dealing with this difficult issue. I would encourage everyone to judge the process that we have established by its results. I commend this Statement to the House”.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for repeating the Statement in your Lordships’ House. Every community in Northern Ireland has suffered outrages, atrocities and murders but today we reflect on the murder of Pat Finucane. His wife was wounded in the attack, and his three children witnessed what no child ever should—the murder of their father.
Thirteen months ago the former Secretary of State, Shaun Woodward, asked the Secretary of State, Owen Paterson, to honour the commitments of a previous Prime Minister and previous Secretaries of State to hold an inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane. This commitment was made as a result of an agreement between the British and Irish Governments at Weston Park in 2001. If peace and reconciliation are to be taken forward we need to respect such agreements. Progress made in Northern Ireland is built on trust. As we have heard, since Justice Cory’s report public inquiries have been held into the cases of Robert Hamill, Rosemary Nelson and Billy Wright but not Pat Finucane.
It was a source of great regret to us, as the previous Government, that we were not able, as the noble Lord indicated, to agree terms of reference with the Finucane family for an inquiry to take place under the Inquiries Act 2005. However, today the Minister has told us of the Government’s decision that there will be no inquiry at all. Instead, the Government have announced an inadequate review, although we welcome the apology. We are disappointed by that decision and consider that the Government should honour commitments that have been made. The incredible scenes yesterday of the Finucane family at Downing Street, expressing their feelings of anger and outrage at being completely let down by the Government, show that this is no way to deal with such a difficult and sensitive issue.
Appreciating those sensitivities and difficulties, I have given the Government advance notice of the questions that I shall ask the noble Lord today. Will he tell your Lordships’ House why, having made the decision not to hold an inquiry, the Government allowed the Finucane family to believe for so long that there would be one? What discussions were held with the family prior to informing them of the Secretary of State’s decision? What advice was give to the Prime Minister by the Secretary of State that led him to invite the Finucane family to Downing Street, they clearly believing that they were to be offered something that would be acceptable to them—otherwise why raise false hopes?
Can the Minister tell us what discussions the Government had with the Irish Government before making the decision, given that the original decision to have an inquiry was made as a result of an agreement between the British and Irish Governments? Why, on the day that the Irish Government extended by six months the Smithwick inquiry into the murders of Chief Superintendent Breen and Superintendent Buchanan regarding alleged Garda collusion, did the Government choose to deny an inquiry to the Finucane family? Do the Government accept that any form of inquiry takes time and carries a financial cost but that it is possible for both of those to be reasonable and that in themselves they should not be a barrier to the pursuit of justice?
Specifically on the review of the papers, can the Minister outline how representations, including any from the family, can be made? What is the expected cost and timescale of the Government’s proposed review, and where will the hearings be held? Will any be in secret, and will witnesses be called?
Everything that has been achieved in Northern Ireland since the mid-1990s has been achieved with consensus. The Belfast, St Andrews and Hillsborough Castle agreements were all achieved by consensus. Indeed, the Northern Ireland Executive operates by consensus.
As a former Minister with responsibility for victims in Northern Ireland, I am aware, as are many of your Lordships, that there are many horrors from the past, many atrocities and many outrages by both loyalist and republican terrorists. However, there is an opportunity for Northern Ireland to escape the grip of the past by confronting the truth about past events. Therefore, can the Minister tell us anything about the Government’s policy for dealing with the past? Having denied a public inquiry into the death of Pat Finucane, what additional resources will be provided to the Historical Enquiries Team?
The people of Northern Ireland have made real progress but we must never take that progress for granted. It has taken real effort and commitment and a great deal of trust. We are asking the Government to reconsider their decision with respect to an inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane because it is the right thing to do. By seeking the truth and honouring agreements, the cause of justice is served and, with it, the cause of a better future for Northern Ireland.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her contribution. She began by referring to the murder, and we start from the basis of, quite frankly, how appalling and dreadful it was. She then referred to what her right honourable friend in the other place, Shaun Woodward, had attempted to do, but the fact is that an inquiry on that occasion was not pulled off. That is the position—there was no inquiry. Indeed, as I understand it, my noble friend in the other place, almost immediately on taking office, wrote to the family and met them shortly after that—something that did not happen in the preceding period.
Discussions have taken place but in the end one looks at what has happened with previous inquiries. Cost is one thing, but let us put that on one side for the moment. I ask noble Lords to cast their minds back. What is their abiding memory of the Bloody Sunday inquiry? I think they will find that, ultimately, it is the apology. I went through page after page of that inquiry document because I would have to speak here on the matter at a later point, but I believe that it was the apology that really caught people’s attention. I think that the prime purpose of bringing the Finucane family to Downing Street yesterday was to make the apology—something that had not happened until yesterday. I believe it is very important to think of the apology, and that was the reason for bringing the family here.
Many discussions took place. We have to recall that one reason why the previous Government were not able to proceed in line with the wishes of the family was that at the time the family did not want an inquiry, which had been offered under the Inquiries Act. That is why we had the impasse. We are trying to break into that impasse by first making an apology and then saying, “There are a million pages of printed matter on this event. It is all there written down. We shall get a very distinguished person to look through them and set out what has happened because it is all there”. One of the problems of going down the inquiry route, irrespective of the money side of all this, is that, sadly, 22 and a half years after the event, a number of people who were involved in it are no longer alive. I recall from reading the Bloody Sunday report that a number of people who were involved in that incident were either no longer alive or had forgotten the detail of the incident, and how difficult that made it to consider the matter.
Discussions have taken place with the Irish Government so that they know what is going on. I am not privy to those discussions. The reference to the Irish case where an inquiry has been extended brings us back to the question of time. Does time matter? You might think that 22 and a half years is a considerable length of time, but more time will elapse before this matter is resolved. The review is expected to cost in the region of £1.5 million.
The Historical Enquiries Team is well thought of and does splendid work, but this is a devolved matter. This Government have added £250 million to the police budget in Northern Ireland, so they may well have the resources to tackle it. In any event discussions are still taking place with interested parties in Northern Ireland about further work.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, may I remind the House of the benefits of short questions in order that my noble friend the Minister can take as many questions as possible? Perhaps we should start with a former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and then go on to the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis.
Lord King of Bridgwater
My Lords, is the Minister aware that this appalling murder took place during my time as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, 22 years ago? What made it even more atrocious as a crime were the allegations, subsequently confirmed in the Stevens report, that there may have been—there was, as the Prime Minister has accepted today—collusion by members of the security forces in that murder. Against that background, I welcome the Statement. I say to the noble Baroness—the same point was made by the Front Bench in the other place—that I think it was entirely right for the Prime Minister to see Mrs Finucane and her family. If he had not seen them and this announcement had been made, people would have criticised him for a lack of courage and not being prepared to face the situation. He invited them to come to enable him to make a formal apology to them for what has happened. That was precisely the right thing to do.
We have the appalling situation whereby the murder was committed 22 years ago and allegations of collusion emerged soon after. It is 12 years since the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, produced his report, 10 years since the Weston Park agreement was signed and six years since the previous Government approached this matter. They pledged to hold an inquiry but did nothing about it except to argue with the Finucane family about the form of the inquiry, which could not be resolved because they were not prepared to agree to the form proposed under the Act. That has left this Government with a logjam that has now to be resolved. No one can seriously suggest that it is a good idea to embark on a major public inquiry that could last another five years, during which time more people who were involved in the murder will die, as will people who may be responsible for the collusion and who ought to be liable to prosecution and brought to justice. These matters are still outstanding. I feel passionately about this.
We owe it to the Finucane family to resolve this matter, to publish a document referring to the people who may have been responsible for the murder and to make the truth known. We also owe it to all those people in the security forces, brave people who, day in, day out, 24/7, have defended the people of Northern Ireland with integrity and courage but whose conduct has been besmirched by the action of a few. We owe it to them as well as to the Finucane family to get to the truth of this as quickly as possible and then let the proper consequences of punishment, if that is appropriate, take place and for the truth to be known so that the Finucane family can see it. I hope at the end of the day—it depends, obviously, on the result of this report, but I have confidence in Sir Desmond de Silva—that Sir Desmond’s report may at last bring some satisfaction in these matters so that they can be properly dealt with.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord King, for his contribution and pay tribute to his time in service in Northern Ireland. He rightly points out the 22 years and the fact that he was in post at that time. I am grateful for his supportive comments and make the point that time and delay are features that we have to think very seriously about. Twenty-two and a half years have gone and yet the report that we are suggesting and which Sir Desmond has been appointed to produce will be achieved within 15 months. Fifteen months is a small period when we think of the 22 and a half years that have gone before.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
My Lords, I want to make it very clear first that I condemn every killing that occurred in Northern Ireland and I spent 12 years of my life ensuring that both loyalist and republican killers were brought to justice. That is my justification for saying that, while I thank the Minister for bringing the Statement here, I totally disagree with and resent the term “collusion”. Can you imagine what it is like to live 24/7 in a situation where people are being murdered, and people are talking about this in cars, in homes, in pubs, in clubs and in the workplace because they are struggling to survive the violence that we had to endure. If that is collusion, then collusion took place, but my experience over all those years, working with police and the regular Army and in command of members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, was that there was no organised collusion, and I resent that term deeply.
Let me further say that there are so many victims, and victims who are close to me: Harold Sinnamon, the brother of my assistant teacher in the school where I was principal; the Dobson brothers, whom I went to school with, two people who were not involved with anything, shot in their business office; George Shaw, who contributed to his community, who took me to my first scout camp; Eric Shields, whom I worked and played rugby with and who was not a member of my party but of the Alliance Party; all these people. Was there collusion there? Are they even considered?
In finality, I was sued by the Finucane family for saying that they were an IRA family. That is what they were, an IRA family. They sued me. When they were forced by the courts to put up or shut up, they withdrew their case against me and paid my costs. Why did that happen? Let us look at the whole picture with 40, 30 or 20 years of hindsight, at what those of us who lived through the Troubles had to endure, and see whether it is prejudiced.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, once more I try to remind the House of the benefits of a short question and that also, on behalf of the House, I have a very long memory.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, for his contribution. This Statement today is about Pat Finucane. It is not about anything else. The apology has been given because of collusion. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, made that clear in 1999; Judge Cory made it clear in 2004. Yet we were at the point where this was not a resolved issue and there was a question about an inquiry and so forth. The noble Lord has heard the reasoning—
Lord Shutt of Greetland
—as to the way forward. Sir Desmond de Silva will have the opportunity to go through paper after paper and to produce a report. That may well be the time for the noble Lord to express a view. But Sir Desmond will be reporting on what the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and Judge Cory have already indicated about collusion.
Lord Mawhinney
My Lords, I was a Minister serving with my noble friend Lord King at the time of this murder and I agree with everything that he said, so I will not repeat it. Can the Minister assure this House that when this review is complete there will be no statute of limitations issues if—and I say if—the review specifies individuals who should be prosecuted as a consequence of the murder?
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I will have to write to the noble Lord on that precise point about limitations. All I would say is that we should not forget that when the report by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, was produced, in the end it was not possible for prosecutions to take place. Other matters may come up and people may contact Sir Desmond, but we cannot say what will happen. The idea is to get the truth about what happened with a murder. That is the position, and what happens subsequently is something for another day. However, on that specific point, I will have to write to the noble Lord.
Baroness O'Loan
My Lords, I wish to address two points raised by the Minister. First, the significance of the apology in the Bloody Sunday inquiry was that it followed an acknowledgement of the facts that had been revealed by that inquiry. The apology alone without the inquiry would not have addressed the issue. Secondly, I would like the noble Lord to confirm that this is a review, not a criminal investigation, and that therefore there will be no prosecutions following this review by Sir Desmond de Silva.
I am one of the few people in this House who has actually read all three Stevens reports, and I am aware of the extent of obstruction by the state in the course of those inquiries. I am also sighted of much further information in relation to the activities of loyalists over the years, and I am very clear that had the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, been allowed to do the inquiry that he wished to do and had that inquiry led to prosecutions, we would have been spared a very significant number of murders, intimidation, shootings and bombings.
My question to the Minister reflects the fact that the Finucane family has always been concerned that the full story of what happened should be told. The terms of reference of the inquiry appear to be limited to the incident of the murder. The Finucane family has been concerned about what happened prior the murder and the collusion that did exist, as identified by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, between loyalists and representatives of the state. There will be no arrangements that will enable any challenge to any decision that will be made by Sir Desmond—and I am in no way impugning Sir Desmond when I say this—but there is no accountability in this process until it is finished.
Therefore, my question for the Minister is: can he give us an absolute, categorical, unqualified assurance that access will be given to all Special Branch and MI5 intelligence in relation to anybody who may have had any association of any kind with the murder of Patrick Finucane, or with those connected with the murder of Patrick Finucane? As a former Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, I am acutely aware of the games that can be played in releasing intelligence. You have to get the question absolutely right or you do not get the intelligence. I therefore ask the Minister for the assurance that there will in reality be no empty promises of full co-operation but that full access to all the intelligence will be given to this inquiry.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and pay tribute to her work in Northern Ireland over many years. She is concerned about whether Sir Desmond has the opportunity to look at the papers. The review will have the full support and co-operation of all government departments and agencies in carrying out its work. There is no intention whatever to restrict Sir Desmond in looking at these papers. That has been clearly said and I repeat that in saying that he has free access to look at these things.
Lord Deben
Will my noble friend accept that all sides of this House should be extremely supportive of the Prime Minister in his unqualified apology? Much of what has happened in the north of Ireland has happened in terrible circumstances on both sides. There is a history which goes back way beyond the present troubles and many apologies which could be made by all of us, not least the Conservative Party over its actions in Northern Ireland. This apology is crucial because it shows that we have admitted that what happened should not have happened and I hope that arguments about the form of the solution will not overcome the reality of the Government’s clear commitment to the human rights involved.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
I thank the noble Lord for his comments. I believe that the word “apology” and what has been done is the most important thing to have happened. The further inquiry by Sir Desmond is on top of that and we have got to find out what happened. The apology is one thing and it is very important. I am glad that the noble Lord has mentioned that. But we have then got to move on because the whole thing is about moving on. Until we can satisfy all of the people who are concerned about this, it remains one of the impediments in moving on in the peace process in Northern Ireland.
Baroness Richardson of Calow
There were four inquiries asked for by the Cory report and I was a panel member for the fourth one that has not been mentioned—the Robert Hamill inquiry.
The Minister asked what would be remembered about inquiries. What is more important is not what the nation might remember but what is remembered locally. We had a public inquiry in which a family and all the people involved were able to express their own feelings about the murder. It released a whole lot of information but also a lot of emotion. That cannot be quantified or have a financial value. A private apology, even when it is made public, cannot take the place of allowing a family to express publicly, in a way which can be heard by everybody else, the pain and horror they have been through.
I welcome the fact that the facts will be known and be published. It is a pity that it has taken such a long time for this to happen.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I understand this and I would not want to say that an inquiry would be no use in any circumstances. We are talking about an event, however, that took place 22 and a half years ago. We know from reading about those inquiries about the people who were dead or forgotten or who could not be found. There are seven key witnesses here. There is Brian Nelson, an FRU agent who died in 2003. RUC agent William Stobie was murdered in 2001. Sir John Hermon, the ex-Chief Constable of the RUC, is dead. Brian Fitzsimons, the ex-deputy head, was killed in the Chinook crash, as was John Deverell, the most senior security service rep in Northern Ireland. Wilfred Monahan died of natural causes. These people are all dead, and this is one problem with the inquiry: one is not able to call them because they are not able to turn up. Therefore, one needs to strike a balance. When one adds three, four, six or 10 years from today, if one is going down that route, one must then consider whether, sadly, others will be added to the list. One must take that balance into account. Asking noble Lords and everyone else to wait 15 months for this review is one way in which we can then move forward.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, I will take further the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. I do not entirely agree with her that the events are not known and that the apology has come before they are known. It is known that there was a murder and that there was collusion: that is clear. However, the details have not yet been published and it is very important that they are.
The noble Baroness said something else that will be very disturbing to the House. She suggested that because of the form of the inquiry, no criminal prosecutions could come from it. Other noble Lords have expressed the concern in various ways that, should material come forward into the public domain, prosecutions should proceed. I seek assurance from my noble friend that that is the case and that the concerns of the noble Baroness are not necessary because prosecutions can proceed from the publication of the report.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I believe that that could happen: there could be prosecutions. I have some doubts, bearing in mind that Sir Desmond will be culling the million pages of evidence that have already been seen. That evidence did bring forward prosecutions. I suspect that because Sir Desmond's work is taking place, people may contact him, or he may contact people, and it is possible that something new may come into the domain and, because of that, prosecutions might happen.
Localism Bill
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
17:50 - Division on Amendment 203L - Ayes: 140 / Noes: 217 - Amendment 203L disagreed.
Lord Greaves
“Duty to promote sustainable development
(1) Each person who is carrying out functions under any Acts relating to planning and who is—
(a) a local planning authority,(b) a county council in England that is not a local planning authority,(c) the Secretary of State when carrying out functions relating to applications for development consent,(d) a qualifying body for the purposes of Schedule 9 (neighbourhood planning),(e) a body, or other person, that is prescribed or of a prescribed description,must carry out their functions with the objective of promoting sustainable development.(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) “sustainable development” means development that meets the social, economic and environmental needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs, based on the following guiding principles—
(a) living within environmental limits, namely respecting the limits of the planet’s environment, resources and biodiversity, to improve our environment and ensure that the natural resources needed for life are unimpaired and remain so for future generations,(b) ensuring a strong, healthy and just society, namely meeting the diverse needs of all people in existing and future communities, promoting personal wellbeing, social cohesion and inclusion, and creating equal opportunity for all,(c) achieving a sustainable economy, namely building a strong, stable and sustainable economy which provides prosperity and opportunities to all, and in which environmental and social costs fall on those who impose them and efficient resource use is incentivised,(d) promoting good governance, namely actively promoting effective, participative systems of governance in all levels of society and engaging people’s creativity, energy and diversity,(e) using sound science responsibly, namely ensuring policy is developed on the basis of strong scientific evidence, whilst taking into account scientific uncertainty (through the precautionary principle) as well as public attitudes and values.(3) Section 10 of the Planning Act 2004 is amended as follows.
(4) After subsection (3) insert—
“(4) In this section “sustainable development” has the same meaning as in section (Duty to promote sustainable development) in the Localism Act 2011.””
Lord Greaves
My Lords, we return to the Localism Bill and have reached Part 5, which is about the substantial changes the Bill makes to the planning system. Amendment 203K, which is grouped with one other amendment, is about sustainable development. This is the third time during proceedings on the Bill that I have had the privilege of opening a debate on sustainable development. We had a comprehensive debate at the beginning of our consideration of the Bill, and a further, pretty comprehensive debate at the beginning of the planning section. Both debates took place in Committee. We are now on Report and come to sustainable development again. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, for adding his name to the three Liberal Democrat names on the amendment.
The amendment seeks to place in the Bill a definition of sustainable development. This debate reappears every time a planning Bill comes before the House, or a Bill related to planning or similar things. So far, although Governments have increasingly included the words “sustainable development” in legislation, they have always resisted including a clear definition of it in legislation. This amendment also sets out a duty of each person who carries out functions within the planning system, from the Secretary of State down to local planning authorities, to promote sustainable development. It also applies to the neighbourhood forums or parish councils which will be carrying out neighbourhood planning functions under the new provisions within this part of the Bill.
There are therefore two issues. The first is whether a definition should appear in the Bill. It has always been the view of the Liberal Democrat Benches in this House that it should, and we have not really changed in that view. The second is what that definition should be.
Sustainable development is a phrase which has been in current use for about 20 years. However, it has really come to the fore in the past 10 years. In 2005, the then Government issued a report called Securing the Future—Delivering UK Sustainable Development Strategy—I am not quite sure why the title does not have an “a” or a “the” in it. Page 16 lists a set of guiding principles, and it is those guiding principles which this amendment sets out, exactly as they appeared in the 2005 strategy. These are: living within environmental limits, ensuring a strong, healthy and just society, achieving a sustainable economy, promoting good governance, and using sound science responsibly—all with the detail set out. Although this strategy was issued by Defra, it was to apply across government, throughout all departments and all government activities. One assumes that that definition applied to the planning system, since the planning system is part of what the Government do, although parts of the strategy might be more relevant to planning, just as other parts might be more relevant to other aspects of government activity.
In 2010, we had the exciting development of the formation of the new coalition Government, who clearly had to review their policies and strategies, and in particular those which had been passed on to it by the previous Labour Government. In February of this year, the Government issued Mainstreaming Sustainable Development—the Government’s vision and what this means in practice. That vision was very much based on the 2005 strategy, and according to the Defra website, which still existed when I looked last week, the Government are reaffirming their vision for sustainable development.
The website said in February this year:
“The Coalition Government has reaffirmed its commitment to sustainable development and set out its vision of achieving economic growth, improved wellbeing and a protected environment now and for future generations”.
The word “wellbeing” has come into prominence recently since it appears in the health Bill as well, but I take it that in this context it encompasses the social side of the three prongs of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, welcomed the new vision by saying:
“The Government is determined that as we reduce the deficit, we also rebalance the economy and put it on a greener, more sustainable footing. In order to achieve this, we must lead by example. I am pleased to see this document”—
He means the document entitled, Mainstreaming Sustainable Development—the Government’s vision and what this means in practice published on 28 February last—
“sets out exactly how we can do that and take our place among the greenest governments of the world”.
I am going to read out much of the introduction to the document because it is crucial:
“The Coalition Government is committed to sustainable development. This means making the necessary decisions now to realise our vision of stimulating economic growth and tackling the deficit, maximising wellbeing and protecting our environment, without negatively impacting on the ability of future generations to do the same. These are difficult times and tough decisions need to be made”.
That is what they say all the time, but it is true, of course. It continues:
“This Government believes in going beyond the short term with eyes fixed firmly on a long term horizon shift”—
this is the crucial bit, and I think I know what it means—
“in relation to our economy, our society and the environment … This refreshed vision and our commitments build on the principles that underpinned the UK’s 2005 SD strategy, by recognising the needs of the economy, society and the natural environment, alongside the use of good governance and sound science”.
These are the guiding principles that appear in my amendment. The introduction goes on to say:
“Sustainable development recognises that the three ‘pillars’ of the economy, society and the environment are interconnected. The Government has initiated a series of growth reviews to put the UK on a path to strong, sustainable and balanced growth. Our long term economic growth relies on protecting and enhancing the environmental resources that underpin it, and paying due regard to social needs. As part of our commitment to enhance wellbeing, we will start measuring our progress as a country, not just by how our economy is growing”—
although clearly that is very important—
“but by how our lives are improving; not just by our standard of living, but by our quality of life”.
I could not have put it anything like as well as that.
In launching the document, the then environment Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said:
“While the Government is committed to tackling the deficit and rebuilding Britain’s economy as we recover from recession, not least through the development of a sustainable green economy, we recognise that our success and progress as a country is about more than economic growth”.
The Prime Minister, when announcing the measurement of the nation’s well-being in April, said:
“Prosperity alone cannot deliver a better life … The Government must be focused on quality of life as well as economic growth … Improved wellbeing is important to our goal of creating a more family-friendly country … Sustainable development is also about ensuring a high quality of life for our children and future generations”.
We appear to have a pretty firm commitment from the noble Lord, Lord Henley, Nick Clegg, David Cameron and from the Government themselves.
The purpose of the amendment is to suggest to the Minister that now is the time to put all this on the face of the Bill so that we are absolutely clear about what it is. If she cannot agree to do that on the wording in my amendment today, perhaps we might consider this again at Third Reading with wording suggested by the Government themselves. In any case, it asks her to give a firm assurance—in view of the controversy around the country, not least over the national planning policy framework—that the firm commitments made back in February this year by the high-ups in the Government to sustainable development are still the view of the Government. I beg to move.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, I agree with almost everything that my noble friend has said about the desirability of promoting the concept of sustainable development. I rise to speak only for one reason—namely, the news of the death of Sir Arthur Norman, who was a very distinguished president of the FBI, as it was before the CBI. He and the noble Lord, Lord Barber of Tewkesbury, came to see me when I was Environment Secretary. They were very concerned about what appeared to be a growing conflict between those who championed the environment and those who were concerned with the well-being of industry. Their view was that, in fact, they are mutually dependent on each other—you cannot improve the environment unless there are the resources there to do it; and business cannot hope to succeed if it flouts all the canons of good environmental behaviour. They came and asked me to help them set up an organisation that could reflect this—and, if I may say so to my noble friend Lord Greaves, this was well in advance of the Brundtland definition, which he has just quoted. I had no hesitation in offering them a launching grant to set up what became the United Kingdom Centre for Economic and Environmental Development—UK CEED. It is going strong today.
I believe that this has now become—as my noble friend has rightly said—absolutely embedded in the policies of, I suspect, every party in this country and, indeed, across the world. My only concern with my noble friend’s amendment is whether it is actually going to achieve anything. “Sustainable development” is one of these expressions that tends to mean, rather like “humpty-dumpty”, what I want it to mean when I use it. I am not sure how far it helps to seek to have a definition, because circumstances and conditions change and one is going to find oneself having to amend it as new developments, inventions and technology come forward. I support the concept of trying to build in sustainable development, as has been done in this Bill and certainly in the framework planning policy document. I just question whether putting an amendment of the sort that my noble friend has proposed in the Bill carries this forward. I say this with some background awareness of the huge importance of trying to get everybody—every major part of the economy and the community—committed to this principle of sustainable development.
The Lord Bishop of Wakefield
My Lords, I, too, rise to speak in favour of the amendment put down by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I would like to begin by following up directly the final comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, about whether it is helpful to have this actually set out as a definition. Those in part of the diocese for which I am at present responsible—I am thinking particularly of the south-eastern part of the diocese—live with some of the most serious deprivation indicators anywhere in England, largely because of the very rapid death of the coal industry over the last 30 years. This has led to the death of community in many places. Many of you will have seen the film “Brassed Off”, which focuses on Grimethorpe, which is in my area.
Alongside the death of community runs worklessness. There are sometimes two or even three generations of people who have never worked. Often, when talking with these communities, I use the term “loss of community” or “loss of corporate self-esteem”. All of us who have families will know that when any of our young offspring, for one reason or another, is stricken by difficulties and they lose self-esteem, then we become most seriously concerned for them. It is something that might lead people into thinking about taking their own lives. There is a similar phenomenon which eventuates from the lack of a community feeling or no clear sense of purpose. Therefore, the headings in this proposed amendment are helpful in terms of economic, social and environmental issues.
However, perhaps there is more to be said than that. When I was in Norwich, I was in a city that had enjoyed prosperity for 800 years, but not for the past 20. Great efforts were made to try to reverse the trend in the economy and eventually they were effective to a very good degree, but, once again, social and environmental concerns are key to building up a clear sense of healthy community. That seems to be the basis of sustainable development.
Another word that is often seen as controversial is “spiritual”. It seems to me that spiritual development is also a key element in this. I do not necessarily mean Christian spirituality, or even religious spirituality; we all know that there is something about the human spirit. When the human spirit is lost in people, or when it is dampened, the community and the effectiveness of individuals within that community are affected.
Therefore, I ask the Government to consider looking at a definition like that and adding to it the spiritual element. Of course, the danger is that, if we do not do that, we all subscribe to saying how important sustainable development is but, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has just said, it is not entirely clear what we are saying. My instinct is to say that we need to define it more carefully. We had an interesting discussion yesterday on the term “multiculturalism”. That is another great word which we think is very important, but no one wants to define it too much because then it could become more controversial.
Many years ago, I remember a former Prime Minister of this country—this shows my age—when asked to respond to a particular issue saying, “I’m not going down that road; that’s just theology”. As someone who has taught theology for many years, I am quite keen that there should be some clarity in what we are saying. I remember one of my teachers telling me that God was the incomparable who lets be, which I thought did not get me very far down the line at all. I do not want sustainable development which is incomparable but undefined. I say that, not simply because I am keen on a series of philosophical statements or philosophical definitions, but because I think that if we do that, it may mean that sustainable development does something for our communities.
I take noble Lords back to the place where I started, to the south-east of the area that I represent, to places like South Kirkby and South Elmsall, which are in desperate need of regeneration. If we have a clear notion of what we are going for in terms of economic, social, environmental and spiritual issues, perhaps we can begin to rebuild that community self-esteem of which, at the moment, there is a desperate lack.
Lord Deben
I do not think that anyone would accuse me of not being committed to sustainable development. Indeed, I declare my interest in helping others throughout the world to promote this issue. However, I have a warning about this amendment. We are trying to change the planning system in order to achieve a number of ends including ensuring that Britain is able to grow in a sustainable way and that the time taken by the process should not be such that we avoid all those good ends. I started being concerned about a detailed definition of this sort when I realised how many people will use it to take the courts into consideration. I hope that the Government will recognise that there are two elements to this: there is the natural desire of those of us who are concerned with sustainable development to ensure that no future Government with less concern should be able to use this Act to avoid some of the necessary decisions which we are making while on the other hand not wanting a definition that brings sustainable development into disrepute because it is used as the mechanism for yet again holding up decisions. I hope that the Government, in considering this amendment whose spirit I wholly support, will think hard about how we do this in a way that does not open this whole thing up to a kind of justiciable approach where every person desiring development will be able to find something here which they can use to try to overturn what a local authority has done.
Secondly, I am concerned about the definition. I know it draws from all sorts of learned and worthy bodies, but the truth is that sustainable development is two words: “sustainable”, and “development”. An awful lot of green people talk about sustainability as if development is not in it, and a lot of people who are keen on development talk as if it does not have sustainability in it. It is necessary to stick these two together. If you read this definition, there is a great deal about sustainability, but I am not sure that there is a tremendous amount about development. Yet my noble friend Lord Jenkin, who taught me these things when I was his PPS, is absolutely right to say that these two things come together. They either fuse together, or neither is able to operate on the other side. I hope that in consideration we will take that into account as well.
The third thing we have to take into account is something very fundamental. It is that we ought to move to a stage in which you do not need both words. We ought to move to a stage in which the very word “development” inevitably means that you are going to develop in a sustainable way. Here I have to say something a bit hard about the Government. It does not help when the Government say things for convenience which suggest that they do not have their heart where it ought to be. It does not help when the Chancellor of the Exchequer suggests that we are going to move at a slower speed in dealing with our emissions than the law says we have to and proposes something illegal. It does not help us when those things happen because then others can doubt our fundamental support for these beliefs.
I say to the Minister that it is crucial that we go further than we have gone so far in making sure that people understand that we mean business. The first Prime Minister to use the words “sustainable development” was John Major. I know that because I wrote that bit of the speech but, in the end, people do not give speeches unless they are happy about them—at least, if they have anything about them. He used those words because he believed fundamentally—this has to be said—that it is in the nature of conservatism that we develop sustainability. That is what the country party, on which we are based, had as its heart. We conserved; we believed in handing on to the next generation something better than we received from the previous one. There is much in this Bill which will help us to do that. We need the speed to do it, but we also need the clarity to ensure that people do not fail to recognise the two elements of sustainability and development until it becomes so much second nature that we need only one word because it means both because we have redefined it properly.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, there is much that the noble Lord has said with which I agree. I must put on my English Heritage hat and declare an interest. One of the disappointments that we have tried to address in this Bill is the need to get greater clarity about the nature of sustainability. While I see the point that the noble Lord is making, that sustainability and development are two words, it is sustainability that raises greater confusion and there has been a marked lack of clarity about the whole notion. The debate that we have seen in recent weeks about the nature of sustainability in relation to development has exemplified the search for general agreement about the content of sustainability.
It is difficult because there are competing definitions, but I support the noble Lord’s amendment. I spoke at some length in Committee about this and will not repeat it, but we have inclusivity in this definition, in terms of the lifetime issue of how we must address sustainable developments in future. It also specifies content and that gets us a long way down the track. It is also a definition that is fairly familiar, so we might be able to get some agreement on it. Whether it is workable, practicable and applicable raises enormous questions about the way that the planning system operates.
I also have a great deal of sympathy with what the right reverend Prelate has said about what else might go into a definition of sustainability. I may be drifting into the danger of a list, but I feel strongly that one of the elements that is not in this amendment—and the Minister might take this away and consider it—is including something about our vital cultural and heritage needs, including those of future generations. That is an important guiding principle for what we mean by sustainability in many different ways. It would also fit alongside this expression of a strong, healthy and just society.
I do not want to draft an amendment on my feet, but one might add, for example, “meeting the diverse social, cultural, heritage needs of all people in existing and future communities and promoting well-being and social cohesion and inclusion”. This is important, because if we are to take this definition of sustainability seriously, this is a moment when we might be able to agree and implement something. It has been debated for goodness knows how long in this Chamber and I believe that our culture and heritage fit this Bill. They feed our sense of belonging, of pride, identity and resilience and they feed into our roots of personal and community life. They express, as the right reverend Prelate said, our sense of community. They help us to know who we are and what we are capable of. All that is about sustainability for future generations, for the future shape and feel of our country.
I hope that, if we are to debate the amendment—and maybe I should bring it back at a further stage—the Minister will consider whether she can be flexible in her approach to it and maybe include the new elements of the definition.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, the noble Baroness raises some extremely important points, wearing as she does proudly and properly her hat as chairman of English Heritage. I want to say one thing: sustainable development, as my noble friend Lord Deben has talked about eloquently, is not something of itself. We are talking about the context in which that development takes place. It is crucially important—if we are concerned about our heritage, the beauty of our landscape and the balance of it in this country—that what is added to our environment does not detract from it. For instance, if we are to have development in or near a historic town, village or particularly important building, that development should enhance the environment into which it is going and not spoil it.
That is my underlying concern about the Bill and some of the interpretations that have misguidedly been placed on it. I was greatly reassured after one conversation with my noble friend the Minister last week. I am utterly convinced that her heart is in the right place and that she does not wish to despoil any more than I do. But we have an opportunity as we debate this Bill to make it clear beyond any doubt that where there is to be an addition or development it must not only be sustainable in itself but must further sustain the environment into which it comes.
Baroness Parminter
My Lords, as someone who passionately believes in the potential of planning to deliver sustainable development, I was very happy to add my name to the amendment. It is particularly helpful that the amendment spells out the depth of field covered by those who will have responsibility for planning to promote sustainable development. Those individuals, bodies and authorities need guidance on what the Government mean by sustainable development. Yes, a belief in localism means giving local councils the power to articulate their visions of sustainable development for their areas through their local plans, but in the absence of a clear vision from the Government, it is imperative that they define clearly and upfront what sustainable development means in order to determine the expected route of travel.
I support my noble friend in arguing that it is right to give a legal underpinning to the definition of sustainable development that is found in the UK Sustainable Development Strategy. Its five widely accepted principles provide a common framework for sustainable development and establish the twin goals of living within environmental limits and providing a just society by means of good governance, sound science and a sustainable economy.
The crucial thing is that the definition has widespread understanding and support. Only last year, 97 per cent of respondents to a Defra consultation exercise supported or did not object to the particular definition of sustainable development used in the 2005 Sustainable Development Strategy. Restating the principles of sustainable development as outlined in that strategy would make it clear that there is no hidden agenda by the Government to redefine sustainable development. I echo the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, but some of the comments by Ministers have been less than helpful in determining exactly what the Government mean by sustainable development. Therefore, reiterating a position that is commonly understood and has been widely supported in recent consultations would suggest that the Government are serious about sustainable development and are not seeking to redefine the terms of the argument.
The Prime Minister himself recently gave an assurance that the purpose of planning is to balance the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development. Accepting the amendment would allow that assurance to be delivered.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, not having participated in proceedings on this Bill hitherto, I hope that the House will none the less tolerate me in making a very few remarks in response to what I have listened to this afternoon. It is desirable that the definition of sustainable development should be filled out, not least because of the suspicions that many people currently entertain in this country that sustainable development is no more than a euphemism for development at all costs.
I know that that is not the Government's intention but that is unfortunately the impression that has gained some currency. It would be desirable to fill out the definition in order to reassure people and in order to provide better clarification and guidance for planners and would-be developers as well as for the communities that would be affected by the development.
We should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for having tabulated so many of the components of sustainable development in an appropriate sense. I agree also with the right reverend Prelate that, however we formulate this, it ought to be clear that the spiritual dimension of our human existence is something that is to be supported and sustained in this process of sustainable development. I am also attracted to what my noble friend Lady Andrews had to say about incorporating references in appropriate wording on cultural and heritage matters. One might also add that it would be desirable for a definition of sustainable development to incorporate language relative to design, and that it should stress the importance of good design processes in achieving sustainable development.
I think that what I am saying illustrates that we are not yet in a position to agree on a definition of sustainable development, other than in the succinct—perhaps too succinct—Brundtland definition, which the Government use in the draft national planning policy framework. I am also wary about incorporating rhetoric and aspiration in legislation. It seems to me that our legislative tradition in this country is to be as specific as we can about legislation, to enable the courts to interpret it in a practical and expeditious fashion.
I agree also with the warning uttered by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that if an elaborate definition is placed upon the Bill, there is a danger that it will be almost an invitation, if not a challenge, to litigants to try to exploit it, whether their intention is to prevent or promote development—although the former is more likely. If the practical upshot is that development would be quite seriously inhibited by placing a more complex definition of sustainable development on the Bill, then perhaps we should be very careful indeed about doing that.
It seems to me, therefore, that if we are to fill out the definition, the right place to do this would be in the national planning policy framework itself, which is the gloss upon the Bill. This is the document that explains and interprets to the lay person, and all sorts of practitioners, the policy of the Government and what they seek to achieve through this legislation. Again there are difficulties, partly because there is not yet a sufficient consensus about how to define sustainable development. At least if you have a national planning policy framework, it is possible to update it from time to time without having to resort to all the processes of primary legislation.
Even if we put a complex definition into the national planning policy framework, that may still make the process more susceptible—too susceptible—to litigation. It depends upon the legal standing of the national planning policy framework, but I think that it does have some sort of legal status. So, I just counsel caution about this. I really do counsel caution about trying to place a satisfactory definition on the face of the Bill, and I think that we should even be rather cautious about trying to elaborate the advice given—the guidance—in the national planning policy framework.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, perhaps it is a little impertinent of me to deny a compliment that has just been given by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, to my noble friend Lord Greaves, but he congratulated my noble friend on tabulating the items, when I think my noble friend would say that he copied it out. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, referred to familiarity and we will all have recognised the words.
I would like to use this opportunity to ask the Minister a question. I have heard her say on a different occasion that two of the five principles are not as appropriate to planning as they are to other parts of government. These two principles are the use of sound science and the promotion of good governance. For my part, I must say that they both seem entirely appropriate. On the subject of science, let me just mention climate change and flooding. Governance, after all, is used both in the creation of local plans and in dealing with planning applications, as well as more widely. So they both seem to me to be appropriate. If that is to be a part of the Minister’s response, I hope that my noble friend can spell out why that is so. I am open-minded to hearing it, but I will be interested to hear the detail.
Lord Berkeley
I have some worries about the whole concept. Many noble Lords have talked about what should and should not be on this list. It is a very good list, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, certainly deserves a lot of credit for putting it together, if that is the right word. But there is not so much in it about development. There is lots about sustainability, which of course I love, but my slight worry is that—notwithstanding the debate going on at the moment about the presumption in favour of development, which I am sure we will talk about later—if there is to be development, it has to be done in an environmentally friendly way but must also be reasonably cost effective.
A Treasury report was produced by Infrastructure UK last year. It said that the civil engineering developments in this country are probably 60 per cent higher than they are in Germany, and goes on to say that the labour costs are much the same. The conclusion that one should probably draw from that is that the difference is to a large extent taken into account with the complexity of planning. Of course we need to have planning but, as my noble friend said just now, if we go too far down that road it will be a lawyers’ bonanza and take a very long time and nothing will get built. In the end, we are in the end going to be competing with other European and world countries about what we produce.
It is useful to have a definition. I think that we need more in it about the development side, so that is sustainable. But we must also recognise that one of the benefits of having something like this in the Bill, and possibly the national planning policy framework, is that it enables us and other people to help to hold the Government to account. Governments in the past 20 or so years, ever since John Major apparently invented the world “sustainability”, have all paid lip service to sustainability and a green environment until life got difficult. We have the 80 per cent carbon reduction target. The last Government made some attempt to go towards them, and this Government are also making some attempt, but if you look to where they have got to, in my view, many people will think, “Thank goodness that we will have retired and may even be dead by the time it comes into force in 40 years’ time—so it does not really matter”.
Yesterday the Department for Transport announced a trial of longer lorries. That is great for the environment, is it not, and great for road accidents and the quality of life? There is need for much more joined-up government right across these things, and some clauses like this would help us to hold the Government to account. I believe that we can get growth and development in a sustainable way, and this is a good contribution towards it—but possibly putting it in the national planning policy framework would be easier, and we could have a much better debate about what should be in it.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I find myself very much siding with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on this. Sustainable development is rather like well-being; it is a concept that we think we know when we see it, and occasionally we will try to pin down what it means in definitions like the one we see before us. But actually it means different things in different times and different places, and should do so.
The development of a nuclear power station, looked at on a very local scale, is completely unsustainable, but on a national scale it may be sustainable. So scale is very important. Likewise, something which on a national scale may be an undesirable policy may be just what a village needs in order to flourish.
Again, when you set out a definition like this, even without including design or spirituality, you find that in every individual instance bits of the definition do not apply, or apply in very perverse ways. How does one apply great chunks of this definition to, say, the siting of a sewage farm? There are bits of it that do not seem to hang in there at all under those circumstances—
Lord Jenkin of Roding
An illustration of what my noble friend is talking about is that it is a developer who builds a new house in the forest, and an environmentalist who goes and lives in it.
Lord Lucas
That is a nice illustration. There are bits of wording; as my noble friend Lord Deben said, if we are going to put something in legislation, then we must produce something that works in the courts. An authority must know that it is complying with the law and other people must be able to judge whether it has complied with the law. There are bits in here which are frankly impossible from that point of view. The words “of all” appear several times, and completely remove the definition from reality when it comes to deciding the matter in a court. There are things about future generations, where we cannot know or even begin to imagine. We hardly know what is happening to the economy next week, let alone what will be the effects of a future development on future generations. We can do our best to assess that, but we cannot be held accountable for whether it does or does not; one just produces an immediate morass in the courts if one goes down that route.
There is a lack, as several noble Lords have said, of development, or the understanding of development. If you are going to assess a sustainable development you have to look at it as a whole, as a picture of everything that is happening, and not its individual bits; as a picture of what will happen over time, and not at any particular instant. There is no recognition of that at all in this definition. You could trip up a development just because it is doing a bit of harm to something, even though looked at as a whole it was doing good.
Indeed, many developments harm things but do good in other ways, and some developments compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Every time you take a bit of coal, gravel or gas out of the ground, that is not available to future generations. It is inevitable that we are living with compromise and fuzziness in this area. It is up to us to do our best by some well designed guiding lights, but we should not try to pin down a legal definition to something which is not suitable for it.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for moving this amendment. We have added our names to it and give it our full support. On a point of detail, I wonder if the reference to the Planning Act in subsection (3) of the amendment should be 2008 rather than 2004. I particularly commend the spelling out of the guiding principles rather than the adoption of the usual shorthand of the 2005 principles.
The amendment adopts the formulation of promoting sustainable development rather than contributing to it or furthering it, which we discussed in Committee. As the noble Lord said, this amendment would enshrine in primary legislation the duty to promote sustainable development at every tier of the process, including the Secretary of State, although the duty imposed on the Secretary of State relates only to the functions concerning applications for development consent, and this would not appear to cover, for example, the Secretary of State’s engagement with promulgating a national planning policy framework. We might just reflect on that.
There has been a divide in part of our debate today between those who say that these definitions should not be in primary legislation, those who say that it should be in the national planning policy framework and those who say that we should not necessarily seek to spell these out at all. We believe that it is right for it to be in primary legislation. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on that. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and my noble friend Lord Howarth, queried whether doing so in a sense gives litigants a chance to challenge every decision whichever way it goes. I would argue a corollary: that not having a reasonably sophisticated framework in which these things can be judged equally, if not creating a greater opportunity for litigation, which is one of the key issues with the national planning policy framework as it stands, is a lawyer’s charter.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said that we cannot possibly live every part of our life by this wording. He is right. There will always be a balance, a judgment, to be made about future generations and the current, and about local and national. To do that within the context that this wording creates gives us a real opportunity of achieving what we would broadly all sign up to.
When we discussed this matter in Committee, I understood that the Minister had indicated no change to the Labour Government’s position on the meaning of sustainable development. I think that we had one exchange and I thought that that was confirmed. If this is correct, it is very hard to see how this is reflected in the draft NPPF, which might be interpreted as giving primacy to economic development and be a view that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, may support.
A number of inclusions or omissions suggest a move away from the definition reflected in the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. The abandonment of brownfield first, the lack of content around social justice or equality and weaknesses around affordable housing proposals do not seem consistent with no change to the definition of sustainable development. If this debate does nothing else, it gives us the opportunity to hear directly from the Front Bench whether that definition is something to which it adheres, however it may be expressed in legislation or be the framework itself.
The right reverend Prelate raised spirituality and the extent to which that is included. One might argue that it is encompassed within ensuring a strong, healthy and just society, which may be the root to addressing the issues identified by the right reverend Prelate. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, referred to sustainability as being what conservatism was all about. I read these principles and say that it is a fairly good description of what socialism is all about. I am not quite sure what conclusion we might reach from that. It will never be an all-encompassing definition. Certainly, it seems to me to be not inappropriate, if we can get this in the Bill, to spell it out, to expand it and to meet the aspirations of my noble friend about including cultural in the definition. It seems to me that a strong strand from this debate is that there does not have to be a conflict between growth and the environment. The two can be encompassed. There will always be a balance in that judgment.
I was as interested as ever to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, about his earlier experience and his historical references. He was there right at the start, although perhaps there is a competing claim that it was the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who produced, via John Major, the term “sustainability” first. I do not mind who produced it first but we should seek to make sure that we encompass it in these important planning changes before us in the most appropriate way.
We would sign up to the definition and to it being in the Bill. Given where we are in this process, it is very important that we have a clear position from the Government certainly no later than Third Reading. Whether we get partial satisfaction today on this remains to be seen but we certainly cannot let it drift beyond Third Reading. If the Government are not able to bring something forward by then, I urge the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to revisit this—we would support him—and test the opinion of the House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, in the daily horoscopes sometimes I am a Virgo and sometimes a Librarian. Today I shall be a Librarian because they are hugely well balanced and see both sides of any discussion. That is precisely the position that I am in today. It has been a very helpful discussion with, as so often, real feelings behind it. From the outset, I shall say that I hear what everybody has to say about this. I may not be able to provide a definitive answer by the end but we are getting nearer to one.
The balancing act here is to do with the question of a definition. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, put his finger on it: the more you define it, the more trouble you get into legally. This is something that we have to take into account. Indeed, what we have also learnt from the debate is that there are potentially still extras that people would like to put into the definition. I fully see why and accept the wish of the right reverend Prelate to see spirituality included, and what the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said about culture and heritage. I hear what my noble friend Lord Cormack says about the importance of development enhancing. However, with this we begin to string out a lot of things that sustainable development is meant to cover. This is a difficulty that perhaps both Governments have had over the period. We all believe in sustainability. We can all define it to our own satisfaction, but the question is whether through that definition you end up in a legal minefield. The comments and speeches today have been very helpful in that regard and will certainly take us forward.
The first thing that I want to say is that we support the principle that planning should promote sustainable development. Indeed, it is central to the approach that we have taken in the draft national planning policy framework. The framework, as presently structured, makes it clear that planning has three pillars: the environmental, the economic and the social. Those are the three pillars that contribute most to a planning decision. We fully recognise that we have to balance those three elements.
Secondly, we also believe that the objective of sustainable development is appropriate for statute. There is already a duty on those preparing local plans to do so with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development. That is already the situation. The Bill will introduce a new duty to co-operate in relation to planning for sustainable development, which will ensure that councils and other public bodies co-operate effectively on strategic planning matters, including sustainable development. Our Amendment 210D, which I will move formally at the end, would extend this principle to neighbourhood planning by placing on all neighbourhood planning proposals an explicit condition relating to sustainable development. This ensures that the principle of sustainable development runs through all levels of plan-making—strategic, local and neighbourhood.
Thirdly, I understand the desire to ensure that there is clarity and consistency in the meaning of sustainable development. We have heard this afternoon how difficult that is to achieve. Everybody sees just another little gate that they might open to put forward something that they feel strongly about. I recognise that there are strong views and, as I said at the beginning, I have heard clearly what has been said. I shall ask that we reflect on that when I come to the end.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am grateful for that extremely helpful reply from my noble friend the Minister. I am particularly grateful to her for reiterating that the Government believe that sustainable development is built on three pillars—economic, social and environmental —and that balance is required to resolve this matter. That is crucial. I included the statement of existing government policy in the amendment but I certainly accept that it may not be appropriate to include this detail in primary legislation. Nevertheless, I commend the principle of the three pillars and balance to the Government. I hope that they will build that into whatever solution they come up with. As the Minister and other noble Lords have said, the problem we have when moving amendments and deciding what form this Bill should be in when it leaves this House is that it is running in parallel with the national planning policy framework. The question of sustainable development is one of the key areas—probably the key area—which links the planning aspects of the Bill with the NPPF. We are shortly going on to discuss a further amendment which would do it more overtly, but regardless of whether that is to be done, the link exists and is fundamental and a lot of the concern about sustainable development has arisen, as many noble Lords have said, from the wording in parts of the NPPF.
I am extremely grateful for the astonishing amount of experience, knowledge and common sense which noble Lords have contributed to this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, said that the problem with sustainable development is that, “It means what I want it to mean”. That is indeed the problem, but, despite that, the words “sustainable development” now litter legislation, particularly planning legislation. They also litter the Bill: the Minister’s little amendment tagged on to this group adds a requirement of neighbourhood development orders to promote sustainable development. It is normal practice in all legislation that when a Government use a term such as this it is defined in that legislation. It is normal practice precisely because the people taking action under the legislation know what it means and the courts can look at it, define it and interpret it. All Governments since, we now discover, my noble friend Lord Deben invented the term “sustainable development” for John Major—
Lord Deben
What I said was that that was the first time it was mentioned by a Prime Minister. It was well around in those days. I would certainly not claim anything other than being a mere conduit.
Lord Greaves
Well, ever since my noble friend conducted it, if that is the verb that comes from conduit, I am not sure—I have forgotten the point that I was making in relation to that, so there we go.
That is right, it is a policy statement. It can be put as a policy statement and it is existing government policy—it is still there on the website and it is confirmed. However, it was effectively confirmed by the statements in February of this year. But there is, of course, a difference—a huge difference—between government policy, on the one hand, and the words that appear in legislation on the other, and certainly a great difference as far as the courts are concerned. I understand all that. Nevertheless, the Government are on something of a hook over this matter because of the controversy about the national planning policy framework. If we can help the Government to get themselves off the hook, we will be performing a service not only to the Government but to the country.
I was grateful for the contribution by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield. I am not sure that I understood all the theological allusions. I spent my teenage years living on the Yorkshire coalfield near Wakefield and I admire his skill in combining a speech about deep theological matters with what in those days we called the new pit villages but are now the former pit villages. I am not sure that I understood all the theological stuff, but I agree with his basic points.
The Minister has offered to take this matter to Third Reading—we have another fortnight. I am extremely grateful for all the debate and discussion that has been taking place with her Bill team and with her and other Ministers on this matter. They are, in her words, “getting nearer”. I am aware that they are not yet there—they are having terrible trouble with their lawyers, who keep finding reasons why they cannot do things—but those discussions are going on. I will bring it back on Third Reading on the grounds that that will, at the very least, give the Government the opportunity to say how much further they have got by then, if the Minister does not bring something back to Third Reading herself. On that basis, I hope the House will give me leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
“National Planning Policy Framework
(1) The Secretary of State must issue, designate and update a National Planning Policy Framework, which will establish policies to achieve sustainable development in the development and other use of land.
(2) Such policies should relate to mitigation of, and adaption to, climate change.
(3) Before designating a document as the National Planning Policy Framework for the purposes of this Act or before amending any such document, the Secretary of State must carry out an appraisal of the sustainability of the policy set out in the document or any amendments to it.
(4) A document may be designated as a National Planning Policy Framework for the purposes of this Act only if any consultation, publicity or parliamentary requirements set out by the Secretary of State have been complied with in relation to it.
(5) The requirements in subsection (4) above apply to any amendments to a National Planning Policy Framework.”
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to impose a duty on the Secretary of State to produce and keep up to date,
“a National Planning Policy Framework, which will establish policies to achieve sustainable development … including mitigation of, and adaption to, climate change”.
This also requires a consultation process and a parliamentary process.
I am aware that some would argue against this proposition and that it opens the door to giving parliamentary sanction to a framework that they may consider to be flawed. However, given the potentially profound effect an NPPF can have, we consider that the better argument is for Parliament to be able to have its say. Obviously we welcome the opportunity for upcoming debates in your Lordships’ House—even two of them—but this is not a substitute for a proper parliamentary process.
I remind noble Lords that the coalition agreement said:
“We will publish and present to Parliament a simple and consolidated national planning framework covering all forms of development and setting out national economic, environmental and social priorities”.
As I said in Committee, if that commitment can be enshrined in the coalition agreement, why not in the Bill? To be clear, the amendment does not seek to put the NPPF in the Bill; it simply seeks the obligation for one to be produced and updated and to be subject to a consultation and parliamentary process, which can be determined by the Secretary of State.
When we debated this issue in Committee, we did so in the absence of an official draft of the NPPF. This of course we now have, although it did not see the light of day until we were embarking on the Summer Recess. Indeed, the announcement of the planning framework while Parliament was not sitting increased fears that Ministers were trying to steamroller through important changes without proper scrutiny or debate. An assurance of a proper consultation and parliamentary process could have lessened these fears and potentially obviated some of the more unpleasant exchanges that ensued via the national press.
This amendment does not seek to spark a debate on the merits or otherwise of the NPPF, but there can be no doubt about its significance, whatever its final form and interpretation.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
The noble Lord has accused the Government of trying to sneak through the framework document because it was published during the recess. I am quite sure that he will have had, as I have, a letter from my noble friend that says:
“We are keen to take every opportunity to consult on and improve the text of the draft framework. We are inviting the Communities and Local Government Select Committee to comment … and are seeking to secure time for both Houses to consider the draft framework in the autumn”.
Did he have that letter?
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Yes, I did. The point I was making was that the document came at the start of the recess and not everyone out there got that letter—and there are plenty of people out there with a very keen interest in the NPPF. We as parliamentarians may have done; others did not. If in fact the Government are happy and prepared to have these processes then let us get it enshrined in the legislation so that it can operate in the future as well. As I said, an assurance of a proper consultation and parliamentary process could have lessened those fears and potentially obviated some of those very unpleasant exchanges that took place.
The presumption in favour of sustainable development, the definitions of sustainability, the implications for the green belt and green space, the impact on housing, particularly affordable housing, and town centre policies are all matters that go to the heart of our national life. Planning is an important democratic means of mediating between different interests, in the public interest. There must surely be due process and a role for Parliament. Despite some misgivings, I understood that it worked for the national policy statements. I took it from our exchanges in Committee that the Government were not averse to this approach—indeed, if they are going to facilitate a process before Parliament, that would seem to support that conclusion. In the light of experience of the NPPF to date, I invite the Government to accept this amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister a simple question. Under the Planning Act 2008, the national policy statements—which I think everyone welcomed at the time—require parliamentary approval and debate. I do not think that there has been any problem with that. They require consultation and they have had it, although some of them are receiving it rather later than some of us would like to see, though I am sure that they will come eventually. It seems to me that the national planning policy framework is a sort of parallel document to the national policy statements for planning and in respect of other smaller developments which do not come within the scope of the NPSs. As the NPSs have a link to the planning legislation, it seems logical that the national planning policy framework also should have one. I welcome the consultation and the debates that we are going to have. It would, however, seem to make it a simpler and clearer structure if there was a reference in the Localism Bill to the NPPF—not what it should say or anything like that, but just a reference.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, there could have been no doubt that the draft of the NPPF was coming out: we have had several discussions in this House and I made it quite clear that it was coming. It has been on the website since the day that it was published and some of the detailed comments on it bounced out almost the following day. So there has been a good opportunity for people to form their views. That is what the consultation is all about, and having got the 10,000 or so responses—indeed it may have gone up by another 2,000—by today, there will be ample opportunity to hear people’s views. I hope that this will happen in a balanced way, because some of the discussion so far has been extremely unbalanced and not at all helpful. I think that it is calming down now and proper discussions are taking place against a real background. We can move on from there.
We are going to have two opportunities to discuss this further. In reply to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, the national planning policy framework is not an adjunct to the policy guidance statements; it is in replacement of. Somebody told me how many thousand pages the policy guidance statements run to and it was something like 1,500. They are becoming very big, very wide, and very difficult to work through to discover the actual policy. The framework is an attempt to cut those down without losing the emphasis and the position that they took.
That is the reason why the Government will be listening very carefully to what is said and what the consultation brings forward so that we do get this right. It is extremely important as it is the background to all planning decisions in the future and for the understanding of the things that we all hold precious—the heritage, the green belt and everything that makes up planning. So the consultation is real and will bring results. My honourable friend Greg Clark, who is in charge of this Bill, has already made it clear that he is very open to discussions on this.
I do not propose to worry the House much more about this. I hope that I have answered the relevant questions. If I am not careful, I will get myself in trouble—and having said that I was a nice, balanced Librarian, I do not want to do that. Having made my point about policy statements, I had better read out what this says because otherwise I will get the wrong thing in Hansard. The national planning policy framework is a very different document from national policy statements. National policy statements are the key documents for deciding on major infrastructure proposals. The national planning policy framework is used to inform the preparation of local plans. Local authorities must only “have regard to” the national planning policy framework rather than follow it specifically. I am sure that noble Lords understood that clearly, and I apologise if I misled the House on the way.
I am looking forward to the debates that we will have, particularly the one tomorrow. Perhaps I may comment briefly on the substance of Amendment 203L, to which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, spoke. The amendment would put in the Bill provisions about the form and content of the NPPF—I ask noble Lords to forgive me if I stop talking about “the national planning policy framework” because I am tripping over the words all the time. I have heard the arguments about the need for the NPPF to have legislative force to reflect its importance. However, there is no doubt that everybody—the public, councils and the development industry—understands the importance of the NPPF. It is unnecessary to legislate further to give it status. Existing planning Acts already require a local planning authority, when making plans, to have regard to the policies and guidance issued by the Secretary of State. That is why the NPPF is government policy. Government planning policy and guidance is also capable of being a material consideration in the decision-making.
It is clear that the NPPF will bite in the same way as the previous policy guidelines on local decisions, and in a way that is understood. Putting it into legislation would risk changing the legal status of the framework in relation to local plans. It would cut across the primacy of locally prepared development plans. That is not what any of us want. The amendment would also mean that the policies of the NPPF would have to relate to addressing climate change. We all agree that that is crucial, but it is entirely unnecessary to legislate in this manner. There already exists a climate change duty on local plan-making. Local communities preparing plans can be in no doubt about planning’s important role in climate change, and about the Government's commitment to this issue. The draft NPPF makes it crystal clear that this is the situation as regards primary legislation. We propose that planning should fully support the transition to a low-carbon economy in a changing climate, taking full account of flood risk and coastal change. There is no need to go any further than this.
The noble Lord’s amendment also requires the planning framework to be subject to a formal appraisal of sustainability—here is that word again. The argument has been made by a number of organisations and we take it seriously. However, we are clear that the framework does not trigger the requirement for a strategic environmental assessment or a sustainability appraisal. It is not a plan or programme required by legislative, regulatory or administrative provisions, as set out in the Environmental Assessment of Plans and Programmes Regulations 2004. However, alongside the draft NPPF, the Government have undertaken to publish a draft impact assessment. We have invited comments on this, and will update and publish a final impact assessment.
In conclusion, the Government are entirely willing to enter discussions with all interested parties on the content of the framework to ensure that we get it right. We do not want to deliver a document which raises doubts about what we are trying to do, or one which leaves any doubts in the minds of those who have to work with it. Its status is clear so it does not require statutory provision. I therefore hope that the noble Lord will feel willing to withdraw his amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Parts of it, I am bound to say, I thought were a little strange. In terms of the comparison with the national policy statements, she suggested that the NPPF had a lesser impact because local plans only had to have regard to it. Given where the Government are on the presumption in favour of sustainable development and where they are so far on transitional provisions, is it not the fact, or the likelihood, that unless something else changes before we conclude with this legislation, the NPPF will be the key document for determining a whole range of development applications? This is because local plans may not be up to date or complete for all the reasons that we are going to discuss shortly. To make that distinction therefore seemed to me somewhat strange.
The noble Baroness also said that there was no statutory requirement to have a sustainability appraisal of the NPPF. But is there a statutory requirement—again we are pre-empting an amendment we will come to—to have a sustainability assessment associated with the revocation of regional spatial strategies? If the Government are doing an assessment for that on a voluntary basis, as I understand them to be, then that does not seem to be a very coherent argument for not having an appraisal of the NPPF.
We are partly looking back, and partly shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted on the first NPPF, but this is looking forward as well. It deals not only with the existing NPPF, but requires there to be some parliamentary process attached to it. Of course I accept that we have two debates, by one route or another, coming up in your Lordships’ House. I am not sure what the arrangements are at the other end; the Select Committee always has the opportunity to review a policy and hold the Government to account. However, that is not the same as having a formal process by which Parliament can have its say and express its opinion on this hugely important document before it is finalised. If the NPPF were so insignificant and something that people only had to have regard to, then why on earth has there been this great furore both inside and outside Parliament? It is partly because of trying to understand the Government’s intent, and I can see that that can be resolved in due course. I also accept that the Government are as a matter of fact involved in a lot of consultation and discussion, and that is to be welcomed. But what is so wrong in having that as an obligation written on the—
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I cannot avoid teasing the noble Lord, and I hope he will answer this question. The national planning policy framework will replace planning policy statements and such of the old planning policy guidance documents as still exist. Why was it not necessary to have a requirement for planning policy statements on the face of primary legislation if it is now necessary to have it for the NPPF?
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, an argument could be mounted to that effect. I prayed in aid my absence from those debates before, so I shall excuse myself. The question is a fair one, but that does not necessarily mean that the balance should come down in favour of not having this process for the NPPF. It is such a hugely important document. One has just to look at the impact assessment of some of the changes being proposed covering town centre and parking policies. These things are very important and really go to the heart of our national life in so many respects. It is about communities, how we conduct our lives and how we plan for the future. To take that formally outwith Parliament does not seem to be right. In the circumstances, I am inclined to test the view of the House on this matter.
Baroness Hanham
Baroness Hanham
The Bill currently provides for the revocation of the eight existing regional strategies outside London and any remaining county structure plan policies saved as part of the transitional arrangements following the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.
Government Amendments 203M, 203N, 203P and 203Q provide the Secretary of State with the power to revoke the existing regional strategies and saved county structure plan policies by a free-standing order-making power. Amendments 203S, 203T, 248ZD, 248ZF, 248ZG, 248ZH, 248ZJ, 248ZK and 249F are consequential amendments. These are largely technical amendments that will provide the Secretary of State and Parliament with an opportunity to consider the environmental assessments of the revocations that we are undertaking before decisions are made on whether to revoke the existing regional strategies and remaining saved structure plan policies.
The Government intend to lay orders in Parliament revoking the existing regional strategies and saved structure plan policies as soon as possible after Royal Assent of the Bill, subject to the outcome of the environmental assessment process. In the mean time, councils should press ahead in preparing up-to-date local plans. These plans will be important in defining strategic priorities and setting the context for neighbourhood plans. Up-to-date local plans also provide councils with the opportunity to control how development and growth are planned in their area and they provide the basis for planning decisions. Until they are revoked by order, local plans must be in general conformity with regional strategies which remain part of the development plan.
Amendment 204E is a technical amendment that closes a loophole to ensure that the local plan meets the statutory requirements and is sound. This is an important amendment, otherwise councils could adopt a local plan without complying with the duty to co-operate. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I was taken with the Minister’s venture into the area of astrology earlier. However, I think she called herself a “Librarian”. I think a librarian is someone who works in a library. I think she meant “Libran”, which is rather different. I hope she will forgive me if I assume the role of a scorpion when we look at this amendment, as Scorpio is my astrological sign.
I am slightly puzzled by the explanatory letter that the noble Baroness circulated a couple of days ago. Perhaps, in her reply, she will be kind enough to elucidate it further because the letter refers to,
“an environmental assessment of the regional strategy”.
I am not sure what that means. Are only the environmental aspects of regional strategies being assessed? Could she explain how the process of assessment is taking place? The letter also says that this is on a “voluntary basis”, which I take to mean that it is a non-statutory exercise and that the Government will be consulting on these documents shortly. I do not know whether those documents are yet available or, if so, where they might be obtained, but I would also be grateful if she could indicate the nature of the consultative process. For example, we now have local enterprise partnerships, so will those partnerships be consulted? I assume local authorities will be, but one could also assume that those partnerships would be involved in all that.
Like other Members of your Lordships' House, I regret the demise of all the regional development agencies, although I accept that in some areas they were not particularly effective or popular. However, I suspect that we may see, just as in health, the quiet restoration of something rather similar—perhaps more at the sub-regional level, but no doubt under another name. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that that approach of looking at sub-regions will be part of this assessment and will also take note of some of the other developments in policy over the past few months; for example, the creation of enterprise zones and the operation, such as it has been, of the regional growth fund. These matters are clearly relevant to the planning regime, but it is not clear whether and to what extent they will be part of this assessment.
This group also refers to the position of transitional arrangements. The noble Lord, Lord Best, will no doubt be speaking about that, and I do not want to anticipate what he will say, but I strongly support the terms of his amendment because there is a considerable danger of a gap which would create difficulties in the light of the arrangements that the Bill contains. I hope the Minister will consider sympathetically the amendment that the noble Lord will, no doubt, move shortly. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify, if not today, then subsequently, the questions I have raised.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, like my noble friend I was puzzled by this group of amendments, and I hope the Minister can help us on a range of points. This seems a further twist in the saga of regional spatial strategies. The Secretary of State sought to do this by diktat and was ruled out of order, then it was provided for in the Bill before us and now, according to the letter from the Minister to which my noble friend Lord Beecham referred, by a stand-alone order-making power. Along the way, the Government seem to have determined voluntarily that they wish to undertake an environmental assessment of the revocation of the regional strategies and the structure plan policy, so it is the process of revocation which is the subject of that assessment.
Can we hear a little more from the Minister about how this all came about? At what point was the decision taken to undertake an environmental assessment of the proposed actions? Who is conducting the assessment and what are its precise terms of reference? How long is it expected to take? What is the status of local development frameworks in the interim? Can the Minister explain how this fits together with the NPPF and, in particular, the presumption in favour of sustainable development? We know that there are local plans which, together with existing regional spatial strategies are, one might say, complete one day but not the next, unless the transition provisions are put in place. The statement that we want to do away with regional spatial strategies as soon as possible and then the caveat about “subject to the sustainability assessments” smacks a little of predetermination rather than predisposition. Does this hold out the prospect of some regional spatial strategies being revoked and others not? If so, how does this all fit together? Is there not a risk that all this just creates further uncertainties in the planning world? Will the order be subject to the affirmative or negative arrangements? The Minister may say that this is all code for having some fairly loose transitional provisions, but this seems a rather strange set of amendments. Like my noble friend, I would greatly appreciate some further explanations.
Baroness Andrews
Perhaps I can buy the Minister some time while she looks at her notes by asking another question about the nature of the order. Why is an order necessary? Does this help to deal with the issues we raised in Committee about transitional arrangements that would have involved saving part of the regional strategies where they were relevant to the LDFs, so that local authorities would not have to repeat all the work that went into making that part of whatever strategy had been located in the regional strategy? If so, it would be very welcome.
Baroness Hanham
In reply to the noble Baroness’s question, the noble Lord, Lord Best, has an amendment on transitional arrangements that we will get to later, so perhaps we can deal with that when we get to it.
I will answer as many questions as I can and then, if the noble Lord will forgive me, I will write on those I have not answered. The public consultation is 12 weeks. Local enterprise partnerships will be able to respond if they wish. They are not required to, but they will be consulted as one of the organisations that will be expected to have an interest. It is an environmental assessment from the regional strategies, exactly as it says it is. Initially, if there is a major objection with one strategy that has to be looked at under the environmental assessment, it will not be able to go forward in a bulk order. At the moment, the expectation is that that order will come forward separately or they might all come forward on the same day. It is the negative process at the moment.
The intention is to revoke the regional strategies and all eight strategies as soon as possible after Royal Assent to stop muddle of any sort occurring. We can do it separately or together. The face of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, always delights me because it is so revealing. I know when I am saying something he does not agree with. The provisions are simply to make sure that those orders can be revoked. The local development frameworks still have to conform to the regional spatial strategies until they are revoked. Anything in them that is required, even if they are developing them at the moment, will have to be taken into account.
I did not pick up all the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. I will make sure that he gets an answer. He has the puzzled look of one who is going to ask me again.
Lord Beecham
I congratulate the Minister on her anticipation. Am I right in thinking therefore that although an environmental assessment is being undertaken, upon which there will be a consultation, the revocations will go ahead anyway?
Baroness Hanham
I did not say that. I said that they will be put forward as soon as possible after Royal Assent. The consultation on the environmental assessment is taking place. You cannot do anything without having taken account of the consultation, so the revocations will be only after the consultation has been considered.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am sorry to ask the Minister again, but I think it is important we get to the bottom of this. Can she tell us why there is this change in approach? This was not the original plan, was it? If it was, this group of amendments would not be necessary. How does the presumption in favour of sustainable development work in the interim? For so long as those local plans and the regional spatial strategies which support them are in place, will they hold sway? That will obviously change the minute the plug is pulled, if it is, on the regional spatial strategies. I am interested to understand why and at what point it was decided to undertake these environmental assessments. Can the Minister confirm that what is being assessed is the consequence of the revocation of those strategies? It seems a fairly significant change in where we all thought we were heading and did not want to head.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I think I am right in saying that there was a legal challenge that required these environmental assessments to be carried out. It is a necessity to make sure that they are all carried forward properly. The noble Lord asked about the relevance to the presumption in favour of sustainable development. There will be no change to that until the local development frameworks are developed and the national planning framework comes in.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
If the noble Baroness would forgive me, I am trying to understand the status of the NPPF in the interim before—or if—these strategies are revoked. Where does that leave the presumption over that period? It seems from what she said that there has been a legal challenge which, essentially, has forced the Government to go down this route. I therefore presume that this is not just a cosmetic exercise but is real; and the consequence could be that some strategies might be revoked and others not. Is that right? It seems to me to leave an entirely chaotic situation. Does the Minister recognise that it could lead us into a situation which nobody has contemplated or to date recognised?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, the national planning policy framework is being consulted upon and, once it is an approved document, it will be the document to which people will refer and will replace the regional strategies. The consultation on the environmental impact assessments is a consultation, as I have said, and we will need time to consider it. If all the orders can be dealt with at, or nearly, the same time, they will be. All I can say is that a consultation is a consultation and there are always results; you cannot ignore them so we will have to wait and see the response and the impact of it. I will not know that until the 12-week period is over and the consultation can be considered.
As for regional spatial strategies, their effect stays until they are revoked. The national planning policy framework will then either have been put forward just before that or very shortly afterwards. By that stage, anyway, it will be capable of being the primary document.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I will not press the Minister again but, given what I think is a quite significant development, could I ask for the chance of discussions before Third Reading, so we fully understand all its ramifications?
Baroness Hanham
I am sorry that I have not succeeded in convincing the noble Lord but, yes, of course we are happy to discuss this issue further and we will make arrangements to do that.
Baroness Hanham
Baroness Hanham
“(3) The Secretary of State may by order revoke the whole or any part of a regional strategy under Part 5 of that Act.
(3A) An order under subsection (3) may, in particular, revoke all of the regional strategies (or all of the remaining regional strategies) under Part 5 of that Act.
(3B) The Secretary of State may by order revoke the whole or any part of a direction under paragraph 1(3) of Schedule 8 to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (directions preserving development plan policies) if and so far as it relates to a policy contained in a structure plan.
(3C) An order under subsection (3B) may, in particular, revoke all directions (or all remaining directions) under paragraph 1(3) of that Schedule so far as they relate to policies contained in structure plans.”
The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)
I must advise your Lordships that if Amendment 203Q is agreed to, then I cannot call Amendment 203R by reason of pre-emption.
Baroness Hanham
(2) Omit section 38(3)(a).”
“Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 (c.20)17A In section 70(5) (which provides for how a regional strategy is to be interpreted) for “the regional strategy” insert “a regional strategy under this Part”.
17B In section 82(2) (during the interim period, a regional strategy does not include the regional economic strategy) for the words after “For the purposes of that section,” substitute “a regional strategy under this Part is to be regarded as consisting solely of the regional spatial strategy under section 1 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 that subsisted for the region concerned immediately before 1 April 2010.””
Baroness Young of Old Scone
This amendment and those in the group tabled by my noble friend Lord Whitty and myself relate to the duty to co-operate. The importance of this duty is indubitable and there has been considerable discussion about it. The mechanism for strategic planning is now only the duty to co-operate. It is new and the only mechanism, so it is important, not just for strategic infrastructure and economic development, that the duty to co-operate applies. It should take proper account of issues that need to be planned on a wider basis than a single authority, such as adaptation to climate change, flood risk, coastal erosion, biodiversity and other environmental measures.
To give two examples: river basin management plans need to operate on a wider basis than a single authority and they are a statutory requirement under European law. Likewise, landscape scale biodiversity can often be resolved by two or more authorities working together. The Government’s Natural Environment White Paper and the importance of landscape scale land management for conservation have already been outlined in the ecosystem assessment that the Government conducted. There are many reasons why it is really important, because this is now the only mechanism for strategic planning at a higher level than a single authority that this duty to co-operate works.
It is doubly important now because the national planning policy framework has no spatial element to it. It is simply a set of policies that do not refer to any particular part of land or the country. Since the regional spatial strategies are disappearing there must therefore be a stronger duty for adequate co-operation between local authorities.
The groups of amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and I have tabled cover four points. Amendments 203U and 203W strengthen the wording within the duty to co-operate to ensure that co-operation is for the purpose of achieving sustainable development. The purpose of achieving sustainable development is in the heading, but not in the text of the Bill as it stands. It also tries to ensure that the duty to co-operate is linked with the sustainable development duty under Section 39 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, so that the two duties are carried out simultaneously and in a complementary way.
The second issue covered by this group of amendments to strengthen the duty to co-operate is to ensure that co-operation is consistent and complementary across administrative boundaries—Amendment 203V. The third issue is to make clear that this duty to co-operate should cover all development, not merely development that is sustainable. We seem to be falling into the trap both in this Bill and in the national planning policy framework of seeing “sustainable development” and “development” as almost interchangeable terms. Of course, they are not. If I had a pound for every development that I have argued against that was manifestly unsustainable, I would be an extremely rich woman. We should not just assume that the two are interchangeable terms.
To leave out, as is outlined in this group of amendments, “sustainable” in Clause 98 is to make sure that co-operation will be around all strategic developments whether they can truly be said to be sustainable or not. It is probably more important to have co-operation around the ones that are not sustainable. This interchangeability of the words is a worry in the way in which the Bill and the NPPF are pitched.
The fourth area covered by this group of amendments is again to ensure that the whole issue of consultation and preparation of joint documents between authorities is not optional. Amendments 203ZA and 203ZB remove the word “considering” so that it does not become an optional process but becomes a requirement to consult on co-operative approaches and on local development documents in these important strategic issues that cover more than one authority. I beg to move.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I have great sympathy with what the noble Baroness has put forward. However, we should be careful about putting the words “sustainable development” into every sentence. We are in a slight difficulty. As three or four authorities all have responsibility to do these things in the context of sustainable development, it is difficult to consult without doing it in those terms. Each individual consultee already has that responsibility and by the sound of what the Government are prepared to do will have that to an even greater extent. I would like to say to the Government that I hope they will be careful with the confetti element—every time there is a doubt add the words “sustainable development”. I say that as someone who is much in favour of sustainable development.
Secondly, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that sometimes in the document the word “development” has been used when we mean sustainable development. It is important for the Government to say again that on those occasions real care will be taken to make sure that we have that right.
Thirdly, I would like to repeat the view that one day we will be able to use the word “development” and automatically mean sustainable development. That is what we would like to see, but the noble Baroness is absolutely right that that is not where we are at the moment.
Fourthly, I suggest to the Minister that the idea of a localism Bill is for it to be local. I worry when those who have always been enthusiastic about central direction suggest that on this or that occasion people should be required to do things. Co-operation is something that you do because you want to or it is not co-operation. Otherwise, you may as well return to a situation in which people are bossed about. We are trying to create a world in which we are not bossed about.
I have just looked on my iPad at the advice given to me by yet another of the green organisations that are so helpful in giving me advice, but I notice that most of them are central organisations, which find it difficult to deal with the concept that associations between Norfolk and Suffolk, for example, might be conducted differently from those between Warwickshire and its neighbouring counties.
It is very simple. The point about localism is that it will be different. We think and do things differently in East Anglia. We do not include either Essex or Bedfordshire, which the previous Government did in their curious manner. We do things differently and we will do them together because we want to not because some superior person tells us that it is good for us.
I have to warn the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that that will mean that we will often do things that she will not like but that is because we want to do them and it is our sustainable development for our place. We will want to do things in our way. The Government must not have a localism Bill that is a fraud. That means that although it is proper to say that consultation will be a duty, it is improper to say that the consultation will be a duty to be carried out in the way that the Government or anyone else suggests is a good idea.
In thinking about this, I hope that the Government will take on board the perfectly justifiable concern that we do not do things without sustainable development being close to our hearts and minds. That concern has not actually been helped by some of the statements by Ministers in circumstances that sometimes lead people astray. That was the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, earlier on. I thought that it was a good way of expressing it. There was a rueful look on the faces of the party opposite at the same time. They also know about party conferences. We understand that, but it means that we have a backlog to make up.
So we have to repeat the words, but we should not repeat them so that it becomes like motherhood and apple pie and means nothing. Let us also be careful that we do not trumpet localism and then suggest that the only way to get it is by telling people how to be local. We know how to be local: please let us do it.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on showing signs of becoming the second free radical on the Government Benches in these matters. He is a better informed free radical than I am but I welcome his addition to the ranks. Secondly, I confirm, having connections with both counties, that Essex and Suffolk do not always do things in the same way. I will not judge which is best because I would be dead in one county or the other if I did, but they are certainly different.
Thirdly, I will show that I am an uninformed free radical on this occasion by saying that what is mystifying me, especially in the wake of the non-pressing of the amendment that appeared to be trying to define sustainability a few minutes ago is whether there is a definition of sustainability in the Bill. I cannot find it. If it is in the Bill, where is it? If it is not, what is it?
Lord Greaves
My Lords, my noble friend has missed a little of the discussion this afternoon. I have to confess that I always thought that Essex was in East Anglia and I claim to be a geographer. I stand corrected and I will never make that mistake again. All I know is that all those places in that easterly bulge in the country are deplorably flat.
The serious point that I want to make on these amendments is simply to lend my support to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and the noble Lord, Lord Deben. It would be good for the Government to use “development” and “sustainable development” in a rather more rigorous manner and not confuse them with each other quite so much.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Young’s amendments are entirely reasonable and I see the thrust of them, but I thought that they were about removing the term “sustainable” from provisions in the Bill and not adding it.
On the duty to co-operate, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, makes an interesting point about knowing how to be local. However, to be local on a sustainable basis in some respects needs co-operation and engagement not only with near neighbours but on a broader front. Some of us have ongoing concerns about the demise of regional spatial strategies. They were not necessarily the answer to everything and were perhaps not perfect, but with those gone the only thing that exists between the regional strategies that were there hitherto and local authorities is this duty to co-operate.
It seems to me that there should be requirements on local authorities to co-operate. Part of the problem is knowing how extensive that co-operation would and should be—for example, on transport or waste issues. Unless there is recognition that this must be an integral part of the way forward, then I think this really is going to be a recipe for isolationism, that we are going to draw up the barriers around our little location, irrespective of what happens around us. As regards definitions of the eastern region, I can say as somebody who lives in Luton—long since known as the urban bottom of the county—that Luton and the rest of Bedfordshire do not always do things the same way. I must apologise—I have been referring to the noble Lord, Lord Gummer, and it should be Lord Deben. I do apologise. Thank you for that correction.
I hope that I have made my point. It seems to me that my noble friend is addressing the strength and importance of the duty to co-operate, and in that we support her.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I, too, am guilty of the terrible solecism of not referring to the noble Lord as Lord Deben. I have known him so long as John Gummer that Gummer naturally slipped out. None the less, I apologise.
Lord Deben
Perhaps my noble friend will allow me to say that one remembers the name when one remembers that Suffolk is not flat. I look down over the River Deben, and it is quite a long way down.
Baroness Hanham
Well, I did not make the point that it was flat. Never mind, we shall get around that.
I must say at the outset that we are committed to promoting sustainable development through the duty to co-operate. I do not want to take a confetti approach to sustainable development in every single sentence—as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, suggests we are doing—but to some extent I am going to have to in reply to this amendment.
We looked at Clause 98 in Committee to see whether there was scope to give sustainable development even more emphasis. The noble Lords, Lord Deben and Lord Newton, are concerned about the localism aspect, but there are clearly times when it is important that local authorities and others work together to ensure that there is a proper plan.
We have gone on to consider this matter carefully during the months since Committee, and Amendments 203U and 203W provide me with an opportunity to explain why I do not think further amendments are necessary. There is already a duty to co-operate on councils preparing local plans, with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development. The duty is contained in Section 39 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. It will also now apply to local and county councils and all the other bodies covered by the duty to co-operate as they plan for strategic cross-boundary matters in local plans. This is the important aspect—not to negate localism, but to make sure it can be carried out where strategic plans are being developed because the proper people have been consulted at the proper time.
Councils are already required to promote sustainable development through the duty to co-operate. We have also made it clear in the title of Clause 98 that the duty relates to the planning of sustainable development, and we have put sustainable development at the heart of the strategic matters on which we expect councils and other public bodies to co-operate in preparing local and marine plans.
I hope that my description of the duty to co-operate and its relationship to the wider duty in Section 39 of the 2004 Act illustrates why we do not need to amend this Bill. We believe this policy is a more appropriate way to emphasise the important role of the duty to co-operate in promoting sustainable development, and we will consider further, as part of the consultation responses on the National Planning Policy Framework, whether that is necessary. We shall also consider whether it would be helpful to emphasise the importance of sustainable development in any guidance that the Secretary of State issues on the duty.
I understand that Amendments 203X, 203Y and 203Z are intended to ensure that co-operation between councils and other public bodies is not limited to co-operation on sustainable—and I put that in inverted commas—development. The key issue here is that the duty applies to the preparation of local plans and where they relate to strategic cross-boundary matters. Local plans will set out policies for the sustainable development and use of land.
As I said earlier, councils and other bodies covered by the duty will already have to work jointly on local plans, with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development. Given these requirements, we do not consider that Amendments 203X, 203Y and 203Z are necessary. However, we shall consider whether this needs to be addressed in guidance issued subsequently on the duty to co-operate.
Baroness Young of Old Scone
I would like to thank the Minister for her words, and to thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his support for my worries about “sustainable” being tacked on to every use of the word “development”. I would also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Deben, though I must admit I agree with him on the fact that Amendments 203X, 203Y and 203Z should not have “sustainable” tacked on automatically, but do not agree with him on Amendments 203V and 203W, where I think the word should be present. So that was the selective approach to using the sustainability word.
I would like to object that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, portrayed me as a top-down, centralist, Stalinist control freak. I am simply expressing concerns about the quite voluntary nature of the duty to co-operate. It is a duty, but it is not particularly well prescribed, for all the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, outlined. I just hope that if Essex and Suffolk decide that they are not collaborating at some stage we do not have a very large flood defence on the Essex side of the rivers and a very small one on the Suffolk side, because that could be rather unfortunate for the folks who decided that they did want to collaborate but were rebuffed by the folks who decided that they did not want to do so. The Minister used the word “encouragement” in the duty to co-operate. Some of these very important issues need more than a bit of encouragement, but that may be because I am a top-down, centralist, Stalinist control freak.
I very much welcome the encouragement that the Minister gave us to look at the final version of the national planning policy framework and the guidance. I thought that I might chance my arm and ask for a bit of guidance to be forthcoming on the duty to co-operate, but I thought that in terms of how the Government were speaking the guidance was probably far too much to expect in a localism Bill. I am gratified to hear that not only will there be guidance on the duty to co-operate but that it might be quite explicit. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
“(3) The scheme must contain—
(a) an assessment expressed in numerical terms concerning the present and projected levels of accommodation need and demand in the district of the housing market area within which the local planning authority falls; and(b) the authority’s proposals for addressing such needs and demands.(3A) The proposals referred to in subsection (3) shall include the authority’s plans relating to the provision of housing, including affordable housing, in its district.””
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, in moving Amendment 204A, I shall speak also to Amendment 204G. These amendments focus on housing and housing assessment.
A consequence to the change in planning, especially the demise of regional spatial strategies, means that local authorities will no longer be able to blame development on regional requirements. It is now down to them. This places particular emphasis on assessment of housing need, including, importantly, the needs of the vulnerable and affordable housing requirements. That is why, at the urging of the National Housing Federation among others, we seek to ensure that there is a clear and comprehensive statutory duty on local authorities to maintain an adequate assessment. The federation states that structurally the focus is on the planning system in the medium term at least being plan-led. Again, this is good, although it places a greater burden on housing associations to forward plan development programmes, since proposals may have to be made through the local plan process, given that local plans will be expected to identify the key proposed housing sites so that the plan can demonstrate that it is sustainable. In the short term, it is likely that there will be more appeals, as house builders try to take advantage of the presumption in favour of sustainable development where plans are out of date and a five-year plus land supply cannot be demonstrated.
The appeal process may raise issues about whether affordable housing policies are up to date, and some developers will argue that present policies fail to reflect the affordable rent regime or the changes in grant availability. They will also argue that viability prevents them providing full levels of affordable housing. Housing associations may need to monitor appeals to ensure that affordable housing levels are not squeezed, potentially offering support to local planning authorities to evidence need for affordable housing in the market area. Housing in its broadest sense—accommodation needs—must be robustly assessed in preparing local plans. With 1.7 million households on social housing waiting lists across the country, it is vital that this is laid down in law.
The reforms to the planning system outlined in the Bill offer a new opportunity for local people to play a more active role in shaping development in their area. However, in order for them to do this, it is vital that they have access to the information that they need. This will enable them to make informed decisions and hold their local authority to account. Hence these amendments will put a duty on local councils to outline in detail in their local plan how they will address housing need. To support this, councils will be expected to provide good-quality data on affordable housing need and demand. There are a number of benefits to this approach, such as transparency; by ensuring that local authorities undertake a robust assessment of housing need, residents will have the information that they require to fully understand local planning decisions. Then there will be comparisons; detailed information will allow residents to compare the performance of their local council to that of neighbouring authorities, which will allow local people to develop a better understanding of how their council is performing. In addition, there is accessibility, with complex data put in an accessible format. Local people without a formal planning background will be able to engage in the planning decisions that affect their local area.
These amendments will also put into law a clear requirement on councils to undertake a strategic assessment of housing and accommodation needs and demand in their local areas. While the national planning policy framework promotes this, we firmly believe that the issue is too important to leave to regulations and guidance alone. With millions of people on social housing waiting lists, many with complex care and support requirements, this duty will ensure that councils have the information that they need to appropriately house people in their communities. The information will be invaluable in determining the amount of accommodation required, including affordable housing.
In Committee, the Government said that they would be requiring an absolutely clear, transparent and robust numerical assessment of housing need. However, it was argued that Section 13 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 already outlined the necessary duty, when that section does not require local authorities to consider future need and demand in their areas. For the sake of future generations, it is vital that councils are required to make and act on these projections. To avoid local plans concentrating narrowly on immediate housing need to the exclusion of future requirements, it is crucial that that duty is put into law. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on tabling these amendments, which deal with one of the most crucial social issues that affect the country today. Looking round this Chamber, I almost regret to say that most of your Lordships will recall the famous television programme from the 1960s, “Cathy Come Home”, which really drew attention to the acute state of housing need at that time. We are not quite in that position, but we seem to be approaching it, and the lack of house building currently planned would seem to bring the day nearer when we would be back to the future in those terms. So these are very timely and relevant amendments, not least because there are some indications that already there is a willingness on the part of some local authorities to waive or reduce the proportion of affordable homes within developments. But even if that were not correct, we need a further elucidation of what is meant by affordable homes.
Affordability will vary from place to place, but more than that the issue of tenure needs to be addressed. While it may be perfectly reasonable to prescribe a proportion of homes for owner occupation, the demand for rented accommodation is still high. I can speak from the experience of the ward that I represent in Newcastle, where a significant regeneration scheme is under way, with a very modest element of affordable homes within it and, within that, an even more modest allocation of homes to rent. Yet given the socio-economic profile of the area, I suspect that there will be much greater demand for rented accommodation than there is likely to be in the course of this regeneration.
I am sure my noble friend and the Minister will agree that, whether or not these amendments are passed, attention needs to be given to assessing separately, as it were, the need for rented occupation and owner-occupied accommodation. That rented accommodation need not necessarily be in the form of social housing by local authorities or registered social landlords—it could be private rented accommodation but at rents which are affordable to the local community to meet that local demand. I hope that, as this matter goes forward, whether in the statutory form or otherwise, that further refinement of the concept of affordability can be taken into account and reflected in policy.
Lord Williamson of Horton
My Lords, I am sympathetic to this amendment, an amendment directed to the essential issue of having a really reliable assessment based on the best possible numbers about the needs for housing in the various districts—this of course relates to Clause 99, on local development schemes. That is important because it underlies the whole question about the proper provision of affordable housing in these areas, which is a major priority for all of us. The Minister may feel that there is something in this point—that it is pretty self-evident, when you read the text, that you ought to have an assessment in numerical terms concerning the projected levels of accommodation, need, and demand. That seems pretty self-evident.
We know that in addition to the various public dissatisfaction—I do not say that it is justified—about the prejudgment in favour of development, there is also, from time to time, a feeling that some of the information available in local authorities is not actually up to date. For example, last weekend I attended a meeting, when I was informed that the figures for the net immigration into the district, on which were based the forward provisions for housing, were wrong by 400 per cent in relation to the more recent figures because the figures on which they were operating were ancient.
There is some concern about these issues; even though it may seem self-evident that we ought to have the best figures, people are not always satisfied that that is the case. So I am sympathetic to this proposal, and I hope that we can establish bases in the local development schemes which can be relied on—relied on—by people who examine them as having the best basis for the amount of housing needed and the demand for housing, and that they should not be seriously underestimated on the one hand, and on the other hand not seriously overestimated.
Baroness Whitaker
In supporting Amendment 204A for all the reasons powerfully set out by the three previous speakers, I should like simply to add that this provision will go some way to taking care of some otherwise very awkward problems: a housing shortage which a small area cannot or will not address on its own; adequate provision for Gypsy and Traveller sites so that brutal confrontations, evictions, further illegal roadside stopping, are avoided, and gradually some inroads are made into the accumulated shortage of legal sites. The words “accommodation needs” reflect exactly the wording in Section 225 of the Housing Act 2004, and will readily be understood to refer to all homeless people, whether itinerant or settled, with the right degree of equality and fairness.
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, I have not spoken previously on the Localism Bill, nor would I claim any particular expertise in the planning system, but I would like to respond to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, in the context of this debate, with particular reference to Gypsies and Travellers.
The noble Baroness and I, and indeed my noble friend Lord Avebury, have participated over a number of years in the work of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsy Roma Travellers, and we have always been conscious of the difficulties that that community faces in adequate site provision, and also the degree of lack of salience—or should I say lack of appetite, perhaps—by local authorities in meeting their existing obligation. I can well understand her fears that these might be projected into the future.
Perhaps I may just comment from my experience over nearly a quarter of a century in another place as a constituency MP. The two planning issues on which I tended to wrestle most assiduously were either at the macro level, major infrastructure projects, or at the micro level, difficulties about Gypsies’ and Travellers’ sites—whether they were organised or not—but more typically, when there was no adequate provision, and they were moved on; although the provision in Northamptonshire tended to improve over the years.
This particular amendment is of course about making an adequate assessment, and that is a proper start. The difficulty, in my experience, is that very few authorities see themselves as having an interest in carrying out this assessment—one or two enlightened ones do, maybe for economic reasons, in order to secure a temporary labour force. Most will do as little as they might. And yet, one could fairly say that the amount of land required to meet all these needs across the nation is quite small, and in local authority areas is even smaller. It would certainly be in the interests of local authorities, who wanted to put some order into this process, to make adequate provision so that people could move to those sites and away from others. We do not want to open the recent wounds about that matter, but I think that a number of authorities are very diffident about doing so.
The reasons for that are perhaps, first, that they may fear that they are shouldering a disproportionate burden; in certain cases they may feel, secondly, that the very fact of assessing provision or having a discussion about it may, as it were, attract or create an additional population whose need has then to be met; and thirdly, they are, to be frank, often facing the hostility of the local settled population, and a very strong political pressure not really to meet their duties.
This has to be balanced; what I have always said locally is that the one thing I do not take is a one-dimensional view of this. There is a need for give and take, sensitivity and a proper discussion on both sides, but it has to start with a proper assessment. There may be a feeling that this is not going to happen.
In addition to this, I should just make the point—and it does look back to the issue of cross-border co-operation—that of course the nature of the travelling population, by definition, is that people move around; not all the time, or in every case, or outside or across local authority boundaries, but it does mean that they have to be looked at with at least a degree of flexibility and sensitivity, given, as the noble Baroness has said, some of the social pressure which is upon many of them, and which is evinced by many frightening social statistics in terms of a perinatal mortality or health outcomes, education, and the rest of it, which we need not go on to tonight.
I am not an ideological opponent of the Localism Bill—I think it is a good approach for the reasons that my noble friend Lord Deben very eloquently brought forward a few minutes ago. But we have to look at meeting the needs, indeed meeting wider statutory responsibilities for equality, which are enshrined in the duties of local authorities, and seeing whether they are adequately discharged.
I hope that encouragement will be sufficient for the local authorities so that they meet their obligations. All I can say is that I very much hope that the Minister can reassure us that she will be able to keep a watch on the situation, and I hope, if it is necessary—though one trusts that it will not be—that she will keep an open mind to any other measures or contingencies that may be required to see that this small but significant and vulnerable section of the population and their housing needs are assessed and met.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, being from Essex, albeit from Braintree and not Basildon, I am a bit hesitant, as my noble friend will probably understand, to follow him down the path of the issue that he has raised. I have to say that it was a brave speech and I have considerable sympathy with the approach that appeared to underlie it.
I want to come in on a different aspect of this, which is emboldened by the speech of the noble Lord from the Cross Benches. My concern in this field is that the more you go for localism and devolve decisions downwards, the more you will risk people saying, “We don’t want this in our back yard. Put it in somebody else’s”. As regards affordable housing, we need to recognise that even in the smallest units, which are not always recognised by villagers in some quite small villages—I live in a fairly large village in Essex—or the most articulate and active people, there is a need to provide houses for the families and young people who are perhaps not so comfortably off but who are essential to the overall life and social structure of the village or the neighbourhood, as it is defined in this Bill.
We need to recognise that with the disappearance of pressures from above—that is, the spatial strategy—on local authorities to build this, that or the other number of houses, we slightly strengthen the ability of everyone to say, “Yes, we all know that a lot of houses are needed but not here, thank you”. We may need to do something to correct that. The thrust of the point of the noble Lord on the Front Bench opposite, although not the wording particularly, is probably well made, and I hope that it will receive an understanding response.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, if I understand it correctly, the purpose of these amendments is to make sure that a proper assessment and evidence base for housing needs is incorporated into the work on the local plan. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, spoke about the immediate crisis in housing. Of course, these amendments will not solve the problem in the short term. The problem of why houses are not being built is far more to do with the financial situation, and the lack of availability of finance for building houses and of mortgages for people buying them. It is nothing to do with the planning system per se but the points he is making are very valid in the longer term.
However, the argument comes down to whether this kind of requirement on local planning authorities should be in this Bill in primary legislation or should be provided in guidance. I have no doubt that the Minister will point out that the draft national planning policy framework, with which we all live and sleep at the moment, has a great deal in it about this. For example, on page 30, under the heading “Significantly increasing supply of housing”, paragraph 109 reads:
“To boost the supply of housing, local planning authorities should … use an evidence-base to ensure that their Local Plan meets the full requirements for market and affordable housing in the housing market area, including identifying key sites which are critical to the delivery of the housing strategy over the plan period”.
Paragraph 111 is rather longer, and therefore I will not read it all out, but it requires that,
“local planning authorities should … plan for a mix of housing based on current and future demographic trends”,
which I think was a point made very eloquently by the noble Lord. I suspect that there is not a great deal of difference between what the noble Lord is putting forward and what the Government want to happen, and that it is simply a matter of where the requirement should be and whether it is necessary to be in the Bill.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions. As one would expect, it ended up with a wider discussion on housing. We have had that on earlier parts of the Bill, which does not mean that we do not have to listen again to the important points that were made. Before I start on the amendments, two areas of thought were triggered in my mind. A concern was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, that with localism and local neighbourhood planning, no one would accept having housing in their area and that they keep trying to shovel it off to somewhere else. That will not be possible because the neighbourhood plans will have to conform to the local development plans, which will have a clear indication of, first, the number of properties and housing they expect to be built and, secondly, the general area. The neighbourhood plans will be able perhaps to say, “Well, we would rather not have it there but we could have it there”. There will be no possibility that they will not deliver what the local development framework requires. That should be helpful.
The Government are committed to 150,000 new homes before the next election, which will be a great deal more than we have seen over the past few years. My honourable friend Grant Shapps at the other end is actively pursuing policies to ensure that housing is developed. The new house bonus is meant to contribute to and encourage both the building of new housing and the improvement of properties. It covers affordable rents and encourages other capital expenditure. The pressure to produce more housing will be there from the Government.
We are asked to talk here about the possibility of a mandatory housing assessment, which we have already discussed a couple of times. I have tried to persuade the House, so far without success, that it is unnecessary to put this in the Bill formally. As my noble friend Lord Greaves has just helpfully pointed out and as I was going to say, the draft national planning policy framework has very clear policies on how much housing must be built and what the local authority’s responsibility will be. That has been combined with the guidance on strategic housing market assessments, which already sets out a framework for local authorities to take account of need and demand for both market and affordable housing, and to keep this under review over the plan period.
Local authorities already need to prepare an annual monitoring report covering housing delivery, which they must publish locally and which sets the context for reviews of plan policies. Preparing evidence is part and parcel of the plan-making process that has its own robust requirements for publication and consultation. Making local authorities publish assessments prior to undertaking local plan preparation would add yet another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy. I fully agree that local authorities should understand and plan properly for housing and affordable housing requirements. However, since existing requirements perform the functions intended by these amendments, I cannot support them. They are already being carried out.
An important point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and much supported by my noble friend Lord Boswell, on Gypsies and Travellers. I am sure noble Lords are aware that local authorities have a statutory responsibility for assessing Travellers’ needs. Every local authority, when undertaking a review of housing needs for its district, is required to consider the needs of Travellers under Section 8 of the Housing Act 1985. Local authorities are also required to prepare a strategy to demonstrate how they will meet the accommodation requirements of Travellers. All the requirements are there; it is up to the local authorities to make sure that they fulfil them and carry out their obligations under the various aspects of legislation.
With the explanation that these amendments are not needed, and that there are good, robust policies to ensure that there is housing assessment as well as to make sure that affordable housing and other housing will be built, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response, although I do not agree with some of what she said. More than 150,000 new homes a year—
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am sorry—over four years. However, even 150,000 a year is less than what the previous Government achieved. If you go back a couple of years, the number of housing starts was the highest for around 20 years. The Government constantly quote a later figure, which was affected by the financial crisis. However, if you look at the data over the period you will see something else.
Lord Greaves
I wonder if there is confusion here between housing starts and affordable housing starts.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Indeed, the noble Lord is absolutely right. However, I understand that the mechanism to achieve affordable housing is through 80 per cent of market rents being the primary funding source for it. Therefore, what the Government have done has slashed capital funding for affordable housing by driving an approach that jacks up rents, which for many people will be paid out of the housing benefit budget. It is difficult to see the logic of that approach from the Government’s point of view.
The Minister’s response to the noble Lord, Lord Newton, was to say that local development plans have to be adhered to. I thought that the noble Lord’s point was about what happens in adjoining local authorities and how they can be persuaded to provide affordable or other housing when a neighbouring authority is fully developed or has little room to develop further. As I have mentioned, that is precisely the situation in which we find ourselves in Luton, as do other local authorities. The noble Baroness says that the route is through the NPPF; I think the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, quoted from that. However, as we have debated, it is a question of having regard to that. We want to put something transparent in the Bill. That transparency will help the understanding of local people as well.
Lord Greaves
If the NPPF had only to “have regard to”, people might be less concerned about it. Is it not the case that local plans—core strategies—will not be approved by the inspection process unless they conform to the NPPF? They do not just have to have regard to it.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
That may be the case up to a point. How that works in practice remains to be tested, particularly given the pressures on the inspectors. We shall come to that point in a moment.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that I am old enough to have watched “Cathy Come Home”. I think I did; it was on a black and white television. It was a defining moment in our country. We are at risk of going back to that. These assessments must also be seen in the context of what is happening to housing benefit. We know that many people will be made homeless and that many will be uprooted from their current communities and forced into new ones. Following the point of the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, about how robust and up to date those assessments are, they would also need to take account of such movements, which could be very significant.
I very much warmed to the comments of my noble friend Lady Whitaker and the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. The Minister’s response was that there is already a statutory responsibility. However, the reality is that to date it has not delivered for Gypsy and Traveller families. It is right that we should focus on that. It was absolutely commendable of the noble Lord and my noble friend to do so in the course of this debate.
My noble friend Lord Beecham, in supporting the amendment, said that we should look not just at social housing or affordable housing—whatever description we apply to it—but at the private rented sector as well. That is absolutely right: we have to look at all areas, particularly the private rented sector. We know that the formation of households over the next decade will increase—certainly at a faster rate than new homes are projected to be provided. That is the source of some challenge.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, made the point that it is not just about whether somebody can afford a property but about what they are affording. What is the quality of the home that they are able to access? That is why, like him, I am a great supporter of the social housing sector. I am sure the noble Lord himself remembers council house-building when it took place and Parker Morris standards, with decent garden sizes. That may not be easy for us to return to but it was indicative of a time when we believed that people should be properly and decently housed.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I was very involved in housing when Parker Morris standards were still used—
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I am sorry; I just wanted to raise the issue of Parker Morris standards, which I think I can do as the noble Lord is responding to that report.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I should be very interested to learn what the noble Baroness wanted to say about Parker Morris standards. Perhaps we can speak in the break.
My understanding is that the real difference between us here is whether this matter should be dealt with in guidance, through the NPPF or in the Bill. We believe that it is such a fundamental issue that it should be in the Bill. Indeed, if we are on the same page regarding what we want to achieve, I do not see why the Government cannot accede to having this as an integral part of the legislation. It is a key and fundamental—
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I am told that I am not out of order and that I can therefore ask the noble Lord a question. Is he aware that when the Parker Morris standards were in force, the standard of all the local authority housing, as it was at that time—social housing has widened since then with housing associations —was way above that produced by any commercial developer? I have heard noble Lords in this Chamber say the reverse of that, but that is not the case. Parker Morris was the town clerk of Westminster City Council. His standards were too high and could not continue to be afforded. Is the noble Lord aware of that?
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Indeed. I am certainly aware of the challenges that that produced but I hang on to the point that it was a good period for the provision of housing, with people, whatever their means, having the chance to live in decent houses in good neighbourhoods. Indeed, for 20-odd years I had the privilege of representing a patch on Luton council built just after the Second World War to those standards and it was a great place. However, that is a bit of a diversion from the amendments before us, and that is my fault.
As I said, the difference between us is whether this matter should be in the Bill or otherwise. I accept that the Government are not going to be moved on this. We will continue to make the arguments but, for the time being, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Development plan documents: climate change and carbon budgets
(1) Section 19 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (preparation of local development documents) is amended as follows.
(2) For subsection (1A) substitute—
“(1A) Development plan documents must include policies designed to ensure the development and use of land in the local planning authority’s area—
(a) achieves reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in line with the carbon budgets set under the Climate Change Act 2008; and(b) meets the national planning policy objectives on assessing the risk of and adapting to climate change in relation to that area.””
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister has noticed that the amendments in this group are the same as the ones that I brought forward previously, but she will be relieved to know that I shall not be repeating that discussion. I have brought them back in order to seek clarification on a couple of points.
When I read through the Hansard for that debate, it seemed that, although the noble Lord the Minister who responded to me on that occasion and I were heading in the same direction, we were on different paths. I think that there was some misunderstanding about the issue at the time.
During that debate, I listened to the Minister’s response and agreed that I would take note of what he said. However, I also wanted to read his comments to be clear about his reasons for not being able to agree to the amendment, because he certainly agreed to the principle behind them. He agreed with us that responsibility for the policies to tackle climate change relate not to just one government department but cut across departments. If the Government are to achieve their targets, they need to have policies across all areas, including planning, which is very important. Therefore, as I said to the noble Baroness, I am not repeating previous comments but am simply seeking clarification.
First, in the previous debate the Minister said that the amendment was unnecessary because neighbourhood development plans would have to be drafted, and he used the phrase “in general conformity with” the strategic policies of local plans, which would obviously include policies on climate change. I think that he was trying to be helpful. We thought that the Government would accept the amendments that we had brought forward because, if the plans can be “in general conformity with”—the phrase used by the Minister—that can exclude specifics. The reason for tabling this amendment is to see whether the noble Baroness can tighten that up a bit. I think it was agreed that, if neighbourhood development plans had to be in conformity with strategic policies and local plans, that would be a little stronger and give a clear indication and guidance that the Government intend neighbourhood development plans to take into account climate change. At the moment there is a little bit too much wriggle room, which could be damaging for the Government in trying to reach their targets.
Secondly, at that time the Minister was concerned that neighbourhood development plans should achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with carbon budgets set under the Climate Change Act 2008. I think he was under the impression that this would mean that every area would have to achieve the same level of reduction. That is clearly impossible and was never intended in the amendment, and I shall therefore be happy if someone can come back with different wording. Both these amendments seek to ensure that all plans, at whatever level, take these issues into account so that they can make a contribution to the targets and the issue is not ignored.
The intention is no more than that, and I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to come back on both those points. Amendment 204B seeks to deal with the question of “in conformity with” and the second amendment, Amendment 206B, tries to make a contribution to the climate change targets but does not insist on equal contributions being made. I fear that, although it is not the Government’s intention, this issue could be ignored. I know from the comments made by the Minister on the previous occasion that that is not the intention but I seek to ensure that it is not the effect.
Lord Deben
My Lords, there is an issue here with which I hope the Minister will be very careful. Local authorities need to be reminded all the time, and we have had some difficulty in the past in concentrating the Government’s mind on the place of local authorities in carrying through the nitty-gritty of fighting climate change. Unless we make sure that they understand that they are on the front line and that what they do contributes a huge amount to the totality, we are going to be in difficulty. I do not think that it would matter so much had we not taken quite some time to get that into the whole run of things. This was a big issue in earlier Bills, and I hope that the Minister will understand that there is a real appetite for her to be pretty tough about this and to make sure that local authorities recognise their role.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, notwithstanding my noble friend’s strictures, I think that this is a daffy amendment due to its wording. How can development ever achieve a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions? Building a house emits greenhouse gases. The process of development necessarily involves the emission of greenhouse gases, and when you have created something at the end of that process, that continues to emit greenhouse gases, even if it emits far fewer than would have been emitted with a development done some years ago. Proposed new paragraph (b) at the end of the amendment would do great things for East Anglia. You would be allowed to build only off-shore windmills, waiting for the day when the place flooded.
Lord Judd
My Lords, my regard for the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and his commitment on climate change is second to no one. He has been one of the leading spokespeople, showing a good deal of courage on the importance of this issue. Because of my respect for him, I can say that I think that what he has just said in this debate illustrates a contradiction between what he said earlier on a previous amendment and his position here. On a previous amendment, he argued very strongly that he believed in a society in which people were not told what to do at a local level. He felt that there had to be co-operation and that one could only suggest what might be the responsibility of a local authority or the points that should be taken into account.
This issue illustrates a tension between national priorities and localism, to which there is no absolute answer. The Government may decide that in the interests of the survival of the British people it is necessary to have certain levels of activity in order to make our contribution on climate change. However, unless there are mechanisms for delivering those targets, they become part of the world of dreaming aspiration, as distinct from real, hard policy. I wish that in the deliberations on the Bill we were all more realistic that it will not be only on climate change but on quite a number of issues that we have to strike a balance between national priority and localism.
Baroness Young of Old Scone
My Lords, I underline what the noble Lord has just said, particularly in terms of the requirement to adapt to climate change. Noble Lords may remember that the Climate Change Act contained strong reporting requirements as regards authorities reporting the action they were taking and their readiness to adapt to climate change. However, those requirements were not laid on local authorities. They were laid on a huge range of other authorities, but local authorities were not required so to report because at that stage they had a performance indicator which established their readiness to adapt to climate change. However, that performance indicator has since been swept away along with all the other performance indicators for local authorities. If I am correct, we no longer have any mechanism at all to make local authorities accountable for adapting to climate change and demonstrating that they are so doing. Therefore, I very much welcome this amendment as it would at least give us hope that a requirement was being laid on local authorities to demonstrate that they were adapting to climate change.
Lord Reay
My Lords, as this is my first intervention at this stage of the Bill, I declare my interest as a landowner. I object strongly to these amendments. When I sought to introduce an amendment in Committee that related to the costs incurred by local authorities contesting appeals in wind farm development cases, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, chided me for introducing an inappropriate discussion of energy policy into a planning Bill. I could now say the same about the noble Lord’s friends who are moving this amendment.
As the noble Baroness more or less explained, the intention of these amendments is to impose on local authorities a responsibility for helping the Government to achieve their renewable energy targets. The principal effect in practice would be to make it even harder than it is already to resist the attempts of subsidised developers to cover the countryside with wind farms, for, of course, that is the one technology on which, in practice, the Government are, or were, pinning all their hopes for achieving those targets. I say “were” because at the recent conference of my party there were the first interesting signs that second thoughts are being entertained at last in government circles about their energy policy, owing to its expense, which seems suddenly to have become apparent to the Government. To be sure, so far the changes have been in rhetoric only but I find it hard to see that that will not be followed by action, for the point is that the Government’s deliberate pursuit of a renewable and, therefore, an increasingly expensive, energy policy is coming into ever greater conflict with the Government’s attempts to protect living standards.
In the Financial Times yesterday its energy correspondent produced an estimate that at the current rate by the time of the next election the average household will be spending more than 10 per cent of its income on its energy bills. In other words, they will be officially in fuel poverty. That will be an astonishing and, I suggest, intolerable outcome. Noble Lords will remember that when the previous Government were in power it was their stated policy to abolish fuel poverty, but, of course, that is quite impossible if you are pursuing a renewable energy policy. Under their watch the number of households in fuel poverty doubled in five years to around 5 million. With the present Government pursuing the same policies, this figure has continued to rise until it has now reached 6 million or even on some estimates 7 million. Therefore, it surprises me that in these circumstances noble Lords opposite continue blithely to propose measures that can only have the effect of further adding to fuel costs for the consumer. It did not surprise me, however, that in that same article in the Financial Times the director of consumer policy at uSwitch was quoted as saying:
“I believe there is going to be a U-turn because I believe the government is listening and they’re going to have to face reality”.
The Government, of course, could have done so a long time ago. I can hardly think of a single prominent independent newspaper columnist who has not over the past two years or more—in many cases much longer—succeeded in exposing the crippling expense of our climate change targets and the complete futility of wind farms. I should have thought that that probably covers virtually all the famous names in journalism, at least in the newspapers and magazines that I have read.
The Government therefore cannot say that no one warned them. Yesterday it was the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, who had the opportunity to have his say in the Times. His article was headed:
“This is no time to waste our money on windmills”.
The noble Baroness may laugh but I cannot think of a more unsuitable time to contemplate putting a statutory obligation on local authorities to give yet more priority to the installation of subsidised renewal energy projects. I hope that the Minister will give this amendment short shrift.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, it has had a slightly longer shrift than I thought it would. I think this amendment was slipped in on the basis that there would be a two-minute discussion on it. I might have known that it would generate a bit more than that. I hope that I can deal with it quite swiftly. In the draft national planning policy framework there is a very clear description of what is expected in terms of the planning responsibility. The Government’s objective is that the planning mechanism should fully support the transition to a low-carbon economy in a changing climate, taking full account of flood risk and coastal change. That requirement is contained in the national planning framework, which is subject to the consultation.
There is already a climate change duty on plan-making. That duty seems sensible and was introduced by the previous Administration. I do not think that we are likely to change that at present. It is not worth rehearsing how the duty works but a local council’s development plan policy documents taken as a whole—that is, their local plan—include policies designed to contribute to mitigating and adapting to climate change. The neighbourhood plans have to fit in with the local development plans, so the neighbourhood plans cannot duck the issue. Therefore, there is a clear line between the local development plans and the national policy framework as one leads into the other—it goes down from the national to the local to the very local and there is a requirement to take it all into account. Local communities when they are preparing plans will be in no doubt about the planning requirement.
We have proposed in the framework that the planning system should aim to secure, consistent with the Government’s published objectives, radical reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. These objectives include the carbon budgets set in law which now cover the period to 2027. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, is correct to say that the emphasis on how you do this will differ in different places. Kensington High Street in my borough is one of the worst areas in this regard but then all the traffic in the world comes past our front door. It is difficult to see how one borough can make the full contribution that is required but it has to contribute to the target. That is clearly understood in the national policy framework. The noble Lord, Lord Reay, has raised wind farms previously and I am sure that he will do so again but at the moment the planning is pretty clear on what is required. I hope that with that explanation the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
I am grateful to the noble Baroness as I think she has understood what we were seeking to do—to get these issues taken into account. I thought that when the amendments were moved at a previous stage we were on the right track but that we did not quite tie up the loose ends. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her explanation. Like her, I was surprised that the debate took the direction it did but I should know that at any mention of climate change the noble Lord, Lord Reay, will always talk about renewable energy and wind farms. However, that was not the intention behind the amendment. It was exactly as the Minister described. As I say, I am grateful to her for her helpful explanation. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Fees Order 2011
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord McNally
That the draft order laid before the House on 12 July be approved.
Relevant Document: 27th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the draft order prescribes the fee to be paid by a person who appeals to the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal. The draft order also sets out the situations in which a person will be exempt from paying a fee and where a fee may be deferred, reduced, remitted or refunded. To facilitate the new fees regime, changes will be required to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (Procedure) Rules 2005. If the draft order is agreed, changes to those procedure rules will be made in another instrument.
At present, the cost of administering the asylum and immigration appeals system is met chiefly by the UK taxpayer via the Ministry of Justice vote, although a contribution is made from visa application fees charged by the UK Border Agency. In 2010-11 the total cost of the system was about £108 million. In that year the taxpayer paid approximately 87 per cent of that cost, with the contribution from visa fees amounting to £14 million. It is essential that we continue to provide effective access to an independent, cost-effective tribunal for those challenging decisions made by the UK Border Agency. However, 60 per cent of appeals to the tribunal are refused. The Government find it difficult to justify why the UK taxpayer should continue to fund almost the entirety of the cost of failed appeals, many of which are wholly without merit, and believe that where tribunal users can afford to make a contribution they should do so.
We are not the first to consider this. Noble Lords may be aware that a consultation paper in 2009 on immigration and visa applications by the previous Administration asked whether users of the tribunal ought to make a contribution to its costs; respondents agreed that they should. In addition, charging for immigration appeals was one of the ideas submitted in response to the Government’s spending challenge in 2010 and identified as one of the suggestions that would be taken forward by the Prime Minister in August 2010. We consulted on the proposals which form the basis of the order in October 2010 and we have made a number of important changes to them in light of the responses to that consultation. I shall explain what those changes are shortly, but before I do I will set out the types of appeal that will generally attract a fee and the range of exemptions that will apply.
Appeals which will, in principle, attract a fee are family visit visa appeals from people refused a visa to enter the UK on a temporary basis to visit a family member; managed migration or in-country immigration appeals from those already in the UK seeking to extend or change the terms of their stay in the UK; entry clearance officer appeals, which are a large range of different appeal types from individuals overseas who have applied for permission to come to the United Kingdom, either permanently or temporarily, but have had their applications refused because they did not meet the requirements of the Immigration Rules; and asylum appeals from people who have been refused asylum.
As for the actual fee levels, where an appellant indicates that they want an oral hearing, the fee will be £140. Where an appellant indicates that they do not require an oral hearing and an appeal can be decided on the basis of the papers alone, the appellant will be required to pay £80. The order includes provision for a wide array of remissions and exemptions. Appeals brought against decisions where action is initiated by the state should, in our view, be exempt from paying the fee. These will include appeals such as deportation, deprivation of citizenship or revocation of indefinite leave to remain. We will also not charge for appeals where the appellant is in the detained fast-track process. Anyone in receipt of legal aid or asylum support will also be exempt.
Some of your Lordships may be surprised that we are seeking to charge for asylum appeals at all. If so, I can reassure them that most of those refused asylum will benefit from exemptions under the order. Where they do not, the hearing of their appeals will go ahead anyway, whether or not a fee is received. Where such an appellant remains liable to pay a fee it is hoped that it will be paid in due course, and it will remain open to the Lord Chancellor to seek to enforce payment through the usual civil enforcement procedures should it not be paid. However, every appeal from a failed asylum seeker, whether rich or poor, will be heard whether or not the fee is paid. There is thus no question of disadvantaging asylum seekers by the implementation of these proposals. There is also a power for the Lord Chancellor to reduce or remit fees if someone does not fall into any of the proposed exemption categories and can demonstrate that there are exceptional circumstances why they cannot, or ought not, pay the fee. Overall, I am confident that the introduction of the fees should not prevent access to justice.
Your Lordships will also be aware that the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, currently being considered in the other place, includes proposals to make changes to the availability of legal aid for those making appeals to the tribunal and others. We made clear in our consultation paper on fees and in the response to that consultation, and I do so now again, that it is our intention to bring forward in due course a revised remissions and exemptions scheme in respect of liability to pay fees in the tribunal to take account of the proposed changes to legal aid. The exemptions and remissions set out in the instrument before your Lordships tonight, therefore, in so far as they provide for the remission of fees by reference to the receipt of legal aid, are intended to apply only under the current legal aid arrangements and will not apply under any future legal aid regime, in respect of which we will bring forward alternative proposals for the remission and exemption of fees in due course.
As I have indicated, the Government carefully considered the views expressed by those who responded to the consultation, including the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council. This has led to a number of significant changes to the draft order and the proposed changes to the procedure rules. Foremost of these is the power for the tribunal to make an award of costs against the UK Border Agency to successful appellants up to the amount of any fee paid. This will allow an appellant to recoup their appeal fee where a clear mistake has been made by the UK Border Agency. It is also envisaged that the prospect of costs being awarded where mistakes are made will encourage the UK Border Agency to improve the quality of its initial decision-making to minimise such a financial penalty. That power will be included in the procedure rules rather than the order before the House today.
The other main change to the proposals originally consulted on is the retraction of plans to charge a fee in the Upper Tribunal. We accept that further appraisal of that option is required and the Government do not plan to introduce fees for onward appeals to the Upper Tribunal at this time.
This Government are fully committed to ensuring that all tribunals remain accessible and provide a high-quality service for their users. Whether appellants are bringing appeals from within the UK or from overseas, the introduction of fees does not affect that commitment. The draft order and the consequent changes to the procedure rules seek to redress what the Government consider to be an imbalance in the way that the tribunal is funded. They make provision to require users of the tribunal to make a contribution towards the cost of the service they are using, and to reduce the financial burden on the UK taxpayer without restricting access to justice. I commend the draft order to the House and I beg to move.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, my noble friend said in introducing this order that many of the appeals are “wholly without merit”. The question is, which? That is what the tribunal exists to determine. It is impossible to start off on the basis that an awful lot of these appeals are without merit. My noble friend said that this bright idea came forward as a response to the spending challenge that was put out by the coalition Government when they came into power. It is a terrible idea when it is examined. The Explanatory Memorandum makes that quite clear.
The first point that has to be made is that it is one thing to fund the civil courts of this country by fees where a person brings an action—that is, he takes a decision to start a case by the issue of a writ or a summons—but, as the Explanatory Memorandum makes clear, this is the first instance of fees being imposed in tribunals where there has been action by the state against the individual. This is not an individual who started things up himself, as happens in High Court or county court proceedings; this is where the state has taken some action against which the individual wishes to appeal. The power to impose fees in tribunals has previously been exercised only in the areas of gambling and land.
We move from gambling and land to an extremely sensitive area of policy, immigration and asylum. Why? Paragraph 3.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that,
“the Government considers that it is not reasonable for the state to continue to fund the remaining cost of the appeals system. The Government believes that it is appropriate that users of the Tribunal contribute towards the cost of their appeal where they can afford to do so”.
However, as I say, this is not a situation where the appellant in one of these tribunals has initiated things; it is a case where he is appealing against an action that the state has taken.
It is not surprising, as paragraph 8.2 of the memorandum reveals, that:
“Respondents to the consultation were generally opposed to the introduction of fees”.
Indeed, when it came to the suggestion of imposing fees for the Upper Tribunals, they were,
“unanimous in their view that appellants should not pay”.
The Government have indeed responded to that.
One looks at the impact assessment to see how viable this scheme is. It really is very interesting. Under “Key assumptions” it says:
“It is unknown how prospective appellants will respond to fee-charging. A number of assumptions have therefore been made to produce illustrative estimates”—
it is a guess, in other words. It goes on to say:
“The Home Office is implementing significant changes to the UK’s immigration regime in 2011, which may affect the volume of appeals in future years and thus the costs and benefits of this proposal”.
The Government’s own proposals for changing the immigration regime will have an unknown impact. One would have thought that where there are changes to the regime, appeals will follow as people who are subject to orders made by the state test the boundaries of those changes as they have been made. It then says:
“The future success rate of appeals is unknown in which a cost award is made against UKBA”.
We are still in the realms of complete ignorance as to the effects of these proposals.
Paragraph 2.19 of the impact assessment, which refers to the principal groups impacted by the final proposal, says, under “Appellants”:
“Fees for Family Visit Visas were introduced in 2000 and subsequently reduced and then abolished in 2002. Research published by the Home Office in 2003 did not find conclusive evidence that these fees were a significant deterrent to legitimate FVV appeals. However, it is accepted that some individuals may currently choose to appeal because it is free but would not do so if a fee is payable”.
That assertion does not follow from the research that was done in 2003.
Paragraph 3.4 in the “Economic rationale” section says:
“The absence of fees means that the service is ‘over-consumed’”—
in other words, too many people appeal. It goes on to say that the users,
“are not exposed to any of the costs that the Tribunal incurs as a result of the appeal. A possible indicator of this ‘over-consumption’ is the failure rate of appeals, which represented a majority in each of the four main appeal types … disposed of in recent years”—
because there is a failure rate of appeals representing the majority, that shows that too many people apply. I go back to my original point that if many of the appeals are wholly without merit, the purpose of the tribunal is to determine which do have merit and which do not. You have to have a system that can come to that conclusion.
Paragraph 4.2, under “Cost Benefit Analysis”, says:
“We have no information on the scale of”,
fees for appeals that,
“will be paid by people living outside of the UK”.
Paragraph 4.3 says:
“We cannot predict how appellants will respond to the introduction of fee-charging”.
It goes on to say:
“For those appellants who will pay the fee, we assume that some of these appellants will decide not to appeal, but we cannot predict the size of this effect”.
Paragraph 4.6 points out that,
“there are no rules precluding individuals from submitting a new visa application rather than appealing an existing one”,
and it is cheaper to put in a new application under these rules than to appeal an adverse decision that has already been made. This means that instead of appealing, you pay a lesser fee and start an application all over again. That seems to me to be absolute nonsense.
When we look at ongoing costs, paragraph 4.27 says:
“These costs are likely to involve dealing with an increased volume of customer enquiries … and with the operation of a contract to collect, bank and administer the fee”.
There is a cost of administration there because you have to decide who is exempt and who is not. Someone has to make a decision: that is a person who is employed and paid a salary. Having done that, you then have all the business of collecting the fees. Paragraph 4.28 says:
“We expect that around three-quarters of asylum appellants would be exempt from paying fees, so debt recovery would never arise in any of these cases”—
that is regarded as a saving. In addition it says in paragraph 4.31 that,
“it has been agreed that HMCTS would pay any judge-ordered cost award to successful appellants and then recoup this sum of money monthly in arrears from UKBA. … However, it has not been possible to estimate these financial impacts at this time”.
Then, in paragraph 4.32, it says:
“UKBA would incur extra costs if some FVV appellants decide to re-apply for a visa instead of appealing because the visa fee would be less than the paper and oral appeal fee”.
Then, in paragraph 4.37, we see what the fee is to go towards. It is not going towards fixed costs, the buildings, but to variable costs, the fee paid judiciary. It says:
“In the short term only the variable cost element can be saved when the volume of appeals decreases, compared to the status quo. The Tribunal’s operating cost savings are based on”—
various estimates. I will not go into the detail of it. The point is that the whole purpose of these fees is to reduce applications and then some savings will be made in judge time.
I support my Government, of course, but I find it extraordinary that this tribunal order should have been brought forward in the way that it has. I think I have said all that I need to say on the topic.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, perhaps I may intervene briefly with a few things that will not surprise my noble friend on the Front Bench at all. The first is that, having made a speech in support of the Government in a rather different atmosphere in the House earlier on, I now wish to revert to type. The second is that I was around in 2009 when there was consultation on some earlier proposals. I think that I may even have spoken against them. I certainly did not like them then and I do not like these now. The third is that I pricked up my ears when he mentioned the body that I used to chair, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, which, not to my surprise, has expressed some reservations about these issues. I have got them somewhere but, having been preoccupied on other matters, I have not studied them as carefully as I should. The last thing, as I have already indicated, is that I am not very happy with them, particularly in respect of the family matters to which he referred and asylum seekers.
That said, and bearing in mind that it would be rash of me to call a vote against these proposals, which I would not want to do, I acknowledge that significant efforts seem to have been made to meet some of the concerns expressed, in terms of exemptions, the removal of the Upper Tier from these proposals, and the statement that appeals will be heard, presumably even if the money is not found up front. However, that does give rise to the question of the expense of collection after the event which was implied, or indeed explicit, in my noble friend’s speech just now.
I draw some comfort from all that, and also from the fact—which I probably have in common with the noble Lord on the opposition Front Bench—that there was an indication that some of these matters will be stirred up again by the legal aid Bill, on which I plan to stir up a bit of trouble myself if I get the opportunity. So I shall rest at this moment and wait for future occasions before pressing the matter any further.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Newton, on the legal aid Bill. Stirring up trouble on that front will be music to my ears. My noble friend has demonstrated just now that imposing fees on appellants in the immigration and asylum appellate system is neither fair nor sensible. As we all know, the Government have to make economies in every area of their work, but the right way to proceed in this area would have been to reduce the need for appeals and hence the cost of the system, which has spiralled because of defects in the UKBA's own procedures.
First, the UKBA should conform to the law by changing its practice immediately when it has been found to be illegal. For an example of a case where it failed to do so, see the reaction to the decision of the European Court of Justice in Metock, a case which involved the rights of non-EU spouses of EU citizens.
Secondly, the UKBA should address those sectors of its decision-making which are manifestly not fit for purpose. My noble friend will have seen the report Unsustainable by Asylum Aid, showing that the UKBA consistently makes the wrong decisions on claims for asylum by women. There is a particular problem with cases where the applicant has suffered gender-based persecution. We dealt with this at Questions just now. This may satisfy the requirements of the refugee convention because the victims are members of a particular social group, an aspect of the law of which, astonishingly, many case owners appear to be ignorant.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I start by thanking the Minister for explaining the order in his opening remarks so clearly and succinctly. I also thank the other speakers in the debate. It could be argued that between them they pretty well demolished the entire point of the order. Of course, when we were in government, we too thought of this—but we did not implement it. It now falls to the Minister to justify why we should take the steps that he intends us to take.
Clearly, this is an important and controversial order. Many points that I wanted to make have been very well made already by the three Back-Bench speakers. It is an important moment not least because—as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, said, and as paragraph 4.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states—this is the first instance of fees being imposed in an action by the state against an individual.
Secondly, perhaps a little less importantly—this point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury—it would also be on top of the fee already paid for making the application that is being appealed against. This point was very well made by the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association in its briefing to noble Lords.
The first application for leave to remain in the United Kingdom—the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, used this example—costs £900 per person. If it is made at the UKBA, the cost will be £1,250 per person. The fee is not for the appeal but for the original application. It costs £70 to apply for a visitor's visa from abroad. An application for a student visa costs £220, and there are other costs as well. The fee is not refunded if the application is refused. I suppose that some unmeritorious appeals might not be heard as a consequence of the order but I wonder, particularly after the analysis of the impact assessment made by noble Lords, how much the Government really expect to save from the order before us.
I pay tribute to the Government because they have conceded on more points following the consultation. This point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree. They have made genuine concessions, particularly in the exemptions under Article 5 of the order in the areas of under-18s, children in need, asylum support, people in detention, appeals and decisions to remove. That is a more generous list than before the consultation began. However, the House would like to ask—noble Lords already have, in so many words—whether the exemptions are wide enough. In particular, Article 5(2) states:
“No fee is payable where, at the time the fee would otherwise become payable, the appellant is, under the 1999 Act”,
in receipt of legal aid. How can this provision be squared with the proposed withdrawal of legal aid for many areas? To put it mildly, there is an irony in its appearance in the order that we are being asked to pass tonight when the legal aid Bill is well on its way to this House.
Article 5(3) in a number of cases will become an irrelevance. Asylum cases will generally stay in scope, but much immigration law will be removed from scope if the Government get their way. I hope the noble Lord will not object if I repeat a question that was asked by my honourable friend Mr Andrew Slaughter MP, who spoke from the opposition Front Bench when the order was debated in another place on 14 September last. He asked why, if legal aid becomes no longer a criteria simply because it does not exist, an exemption should not be made for those on low incomes or specified benefits who would have been eligible for legal aid if it had still existed.
The Minister drew back the curtain a little on this when he said that the Government would come forward to make allowance for legal aid going out of scope. However, I would like him in his reply to tell us a little more about what the Government plan. Surely the criteria should remain the same whether legal aid exists or not. The Minister in another place did not answer that question in his summing up. I hope that the noble Lord will tonight.
Nor did the Minister in another place answer when he was asked to clarify figures from 2009-10 for success rates when public funding was available in these cases, and for when it was not. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, told us about the difference between oral and paper hearings. These questions are about when legal aid was available. I ask whether the following figures are correct. As far as concerns migration, there was a 52 per cent success rate on appeal without legal aid but a 60 per cent success rate with legal aid. On asylum cases, there was a 25 per cent success rate on appeal without legal aid and a 37 per cent success rate with legal aid. For entry clearance cases, there was a 36 per cent success rate without legal aid and a 65 per cent success rate with legal aid. Lastly, for family visits, there was a 44 per cent success rate without representation under legal aid and 53 per cent success with legal aid. The Minister in another place was not able to confirm whether the figures were correct. It may be that the Minister tonight cannot answer the question, either. If he cannot, I would be very grateful if he would write a letter with the answers to the questions, which will appear in Hansard, and send a copy both to me and to other noble Lords who spoke in the debate. Those figures seem to imply, and in fact go further than that to prove, that representation is of enormous benefit to appellants. This is hardly a surprising conclusion but it is of course a very important one in the arguments about legal aid that we will no doubt enjoy in a few weeks.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I am grateful for the contributions to this debate. They do not entirely surprise me. What the Government are trying to do is difficult, and it is always easier to spend taxpayers’ money. I understand what colleagues are saying, but I think that they are putting slightly too much burden on their fears and on warnings. We are talking about asking people to pay 25 per cent of the charge for a process which—as has been acknowledged—will have already carried a fee of some £900. This is not a case of the state casually dropping on innocent citizens and prosecuting them. This is about people who are applying to enter our country, who are paying a fee for a process and where, at a second stage of that process—the tribunal level—we are suggesting a very modest fee.
I fully accept that we are going to have a much more fundamental debate when the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill reaches us, and I will be very happy to take on that debate. We are suggesting that there are certain areas of legal aid, which have been covered, where my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor and I believe that it is not the business of the taxpayer to finance the legal profession to participate in these activities. Indeed, at the tribunal level we believe that the emphasis should be put on a much less legalistic approach, but that may be a debate for another day.
I do not think that this is a horrendous charge. It will benefit the taxpayer because we expect the savings and receipts to benefit the budget by £16 million to £20 million a year. Again, this must be seen in the context of dealing with almost 200,000 appeals. Whether the charges will have an impact on a falling-off of appeals will have to be seen, but I suspect that it will; it certainly may have a small deterrent effect on non-meritorious appeals. But if one looks at how my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor has gone out of his way to create as broad as possible a range of exemptions and inclusions—the noble Lord, Lord Bach, was good enough to acknowledge that—I do not think that this is the harsh and unfeeling policy that has been suggested.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked whether we had consulted the UNHCR. Yes, we did, as part of the full consultation. Perhaps not surprisingly the commission did express concerns about the charging of refugees and others, but there was no suggestion that in so doing we were breaking any of our international obligations. I am sure that we will have a debate on other matters because we are looking to reduce the amount of money that the taxpayer contributes to a range of legal activities, and in this case we are asking those who apply to enter our country—it has been conceded that they will have already paid a considerable fee up front—if they have to appeal against a decision, to pay a modest fee in response. I do not think that that is the kind of horrible policy suggested by my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford. It is one of those necessary activities we are undertaking partly to reset the system that we inherited and partly to ask those who make use of the system to make a modest contribution.
Future changes will be affected in part by the decisions of the Bill before the House, and I have already explained how that will make a further impact on tribunal work. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, asked about the discrepancies in the success rate of appeals supported by legal aid versus those that are not. I understand that the figures are not published by the Ministry of Justice, but we will investigate them and write to the noble Lord. On our plans for future fee levels, the Government have committed themselves to regular reviews, the first of which will take place in 2012. I think that I have covered most of the questions that were raised by noble Lords, but if I have not, I will certainly write in clarification.
We are not looking at this as a draconian hurdle that makes it impossible for people to appeal; quite the contrary. How we have set up the structure and the exemptions we give show that our principal aim is to retain the concept of access to justice. People wishing to challenge a decision of the UK Border Agency will continue to have access to an independent tribunal which is part of a justice system that is respected throughout the world. However, the system costs money and the Government believe that taxpayers should not have to shoulder the entire burden. A proportion of the costs is already raised from visa fees, but we are reluctant to increase these further for fear of discouraging applications from essential workers, students and others, most of whom will never make use of the appeal system. In order to ensure that no one is denied access to justice, we are putting in place a system of exemptions and remissions, and setting the fees at very modest levels. We have also undertaken to keep the impact of introducing fees under review, and to consult on and bring forward revised exemptions and remissions proposals to replace the pegging of remissions to legal aid, should its availability be reduced.
Finally, in response to the representations made about consultation, the order provides that the tribunal may instruct UKBA to refund the fees of successful appellants, thus ensuring that they do not have to pay to correct the errors of the agency. That in itself will incentivise the agency to improve its initial decision-making—I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Avebury about that—and will reduce the rate of successful appeals to the tribunal. I note what has been said and that we will be returning with vigour to some of these issues when the LASPO Bill comes before the House. But, overall, I believe that this is a carefully measured proposal that will reduce government expenditure at a time when this is vital to our economic well-being, while maintaining access to an important means of challenging the decisions of the Executive in the immigration field. In that spirit, I commend this draft order to the House.
Localism Bill
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Marlesford
“(ai) that the document has had due regard to protecting and enhancing the quality and character of the countryside”
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, my Amendment 204C relates to the central issue of the Bill—the purpose of the planning system. I want, therefore, to put it in an historical and political context. I have always thought that the two great achievements of the post-war Attlee Government were the creation of a national health service in 1947 and the introduction, in 1948, of the planning system to protect the beauty of England. Both of these are hugely sensitive political issues. If a Government get either of them wrong, they will pay a heavy price at the polling booths. It is, perhaps, a coincidence that we have been discussing both these issues here today. The House has already expressed today its confidence in the intention of the Government to adjust its policy on the National Health Service in whatever way is necessary to get the right answer. At the moment, I am afraid I am less confident that the Government are prepared to improve this Bill. Indeed, I was disappointed by the pathetic reply that I received from my noble friend Lord Shutt in relation to my earlier amendment this week, on the need to keep Britain tidy. It is bad enough that officials should give Ministers briefs containing poor arguments, but what is quite unacceptable is that Ministers should parrot those same arguments from the Dispatch Box. I suggest that some Ministers need to take a lesson from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on how to tear up the departmental line when standing at the Dispatch Box. Let me say at once that I am sure that comment in no way applies to my noble friend Lady Hanham, for whom I have the highest praise and regard.
The creation of our planning system really goes back to 1928. That was the year that the great architect and conservationist Clough Williams-Ellis produced a polemical book called England and the Octopus, in which, in the words of Jonathan Dimbleby:
“He waged war on the ugliness, selfishness and short-sightedness and the catastrophic consequences of these human frailties on the precious quality of rural England”.
In 1928, the CPRE, of which in 1996 Jonathan Dimbleby was president and I was chairman, was in its infancy; but Clough Williams-Ellis and the other founding fathers such as Patrick Abercrombie used it to create the pressure from which, 20 years later, we got our planning system. That the planning system needs reform, I hope none of us would contest; but the rather ill-informed and ill-prepared zest with which the Government launched this Bill and the draft NPPF provoked and indeed alarmed a large section of the huge community that cherishes the English countryside.
Amendment 204C, which is being promoted by the CPRE, and is also supported by the National Trust and the Heritage Alliance, seeks to ensure that, when they are preparing local development plans, local planning authorities give due consideration to the need to protect and enhance the countryside, in the words of the late Nicholas Ridley—who was a tough Treasury minister and a true Tory—“for its own sake”.
One of the central tenets of the post-war planning system in England is that by guiding appropriate development to sustainable locations in the countryside, the countryside itself should be protected from unnecessary and irreversible damage, and the regeneration of our towns and cities promoted.
This principle is currently upheld by a series of policies contained in national planning policy statements, including policy EC6 in Planning Policy Statement 4: Planning for Sustainable Economic Growth, that the countryside should be protected,
“for the sake of its intrinsic character and beauty”.
Critically, this protection is not just conferred on high-profile designated areas of countryside, such as national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and heritage coasts, but on the ordinary countryside which is enjoyed by and which improves the quality of life of rural and urban dwellers all over England. However, the Government's planning reforms, being implemented by both the Localism Bill and the draft NPPF, as currently drafted, stand to remove the existing protection for the wider, ordinary countryside. I should emphasise that undesignated countryside makes up well over half of all countryside in England.
In addition, the NPPF introduces a,
“presumption in favour of sustainable development”,
a material consideration which my right honourable friend the Chancellor, in his 2011 Budget speech, summarised as meaning that,
“the default answer to development is yes.”—[Official Report, Commons, 23/3/11; col. 956.]
Understandably, the Government have been reluctant to define the term “sustainable” but, as my noble friend Lord Deben says, in a sense we all know what we mean by sustainable. It is common sense and it is localism at its most intense.
As Amendment 204D, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, draws attention to, the draft NPPF also does not contain a presumption that previously developed land should be developed first—the brownfield first policy—and it does not require planning authorities to have policies on housing density.
We should remember two points. First, developers will always go for green land rather than brown, if they have the choice, as it is so much cheaper to build on. Secondly, in general, the lack of housebuilding, particularly now, is probably more due to the economy than to a shortage of land. Housebuilders will not build houses if they cannot sell them.
Taken together, these changes will have serious and potentially devastating implications for the future of the countryside. They will create pressure on undesignated countryside, drastically limit the ability of local authorities to contain urban sprawl, to promote sustainable patterns of development and, therefore, to maintain a distinction between town and country and to plan for a high-quality and sustainable built environment.
It is not at all clear how, in the absence of national policy that promotes the protection and enhancement of the wider countryside, the Government intend to ensure that the countryside is protected from unnecessary and irreversible damage under the terms of its planning reforms. My amendment would create a legal requirement that development plans should not be deemed sound unless they have had due regard to the protection and enhancement of the countryside.
In their natural environment White Paper, published earlier this year, the Government declared their ambition for,
“this to be the first generation to leave the natural environment of England in a better state than it inherited”.
This document, significantly, also recognises the intrinsic value of the natural environment, and explicitly includes the open countryside in its definition of natural environment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we have Amendment 204D in this group, and we have added our name to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. My approach to this will be much more mundane than the rhetoric, commitment and passion that we have just heard from the noble Lord, but we support the thrust of his inquiry. There is no doubt that this combination of the Bill and the NPPF—we struggle to have these two different tracks of change in planning policy—has created great consternation in a constituency which is probably closer to the Minister and her colleagues than to us. There are clear questions that have to be answered.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, who said when he moved this amendment that the two great achievements of what these Benches call the Attlee Government and view with great affection were the creation of the NHS and the planning system. Was it Mr Silkin who did it in the Commons?
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am advised that it was Lewis Silkin. We have some historical perspective on our side as well. I would not say they were the only achievements of the 1948 Government—there was much else—but I agree with that assessment. I never aspired to do what my noble friend Lord Rooker did in tearing up ministerial briefs. It is only somebody with my noble friend’s experience who could get away with doing that.
The noble Lord has focused on a real question about protecting the countryside. The Minister may well pray in aid the draft NPPF, subject still to that final consultation, and say that it is all covered in there. However, the onus is on the noble Baroness tonight to say that it is.
Amendment 204D talks about “previously developed” land. Sometimes the shorthand of “brownfield sites” gets mixed up with that terminology, even by Minister Greg Clark himself in an exchange in the other place. He was questioned and answered:
“I am happy to reassure the hon. Gentleman that that is not the case”—
that is, a planning free-for-all.
“If he takes the specific example of brownfield sites, he will find that paragraph 165 of the framework sets out clearly that land of the least environmental value should be brought forward first. That is another way of saying, brownfield land first”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/9/11; col 20.]
However put, if that is still the policy, and demonstrably so, then it clearly has our support. The success of that approach is clear: the “brownfield first” policy has been working. Last year, 76 per cent of new dwellings were built on brownfield sites—an increase from 55 per cent in 1989—but we are entitled to inquire how that position is going to be protected in the new world of planning. Will the Government confirm that it is their intention that that should be the approach? We would be pleased to hear it confirmed this evening and the extent to which it is reflected either in the Bill, which I do not think it is, or in the NPPF and its references focusing on it. I am advised that it is estimated that there are already 62,000 hectares of previously developed land ready for building on, of which 10,000 are in the south-east. This is enough to build more than 1.2 million new homes.
The issues for the Minister in replying are clear: she has to reassure us—and as the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, said, she must also reassure a much wider public—about the Government’s intent. More importantly, how is that intent reflected in the NPPF or the Bill? Without necessarily analysing the timing, manner or wording of the NPPF and the Bill, there is no doubt that it created a furore and a backlash. It is incumbent on the Government tonight and in going forward to clarify their position and reassure those who are concerned about what may happen to the countryside.
I would argue not only for the countryside. I have always lived in an urban area and there are issues about urban spaces as well, but this focus is on the countryside, particularly that part that is not specifically designated as greenfield land. The NPPF focuses on designation and the circumstances in which designation might be reassessed. One of the propositions is that if local development plans are revised or updated, that may be a trigger for reviewing the boundaries of greenfield land. Given that there is not a local development plan in the land that will be up to date when this Bill comes into force, there is a big question mark over that as well.
I am sorry I cannot muster the passion of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, in his arguments for the countryside, but I support those arguments and seek reassurance on developing previously developed land first as the policy and commitment of the Government.
Lord Judd
My Lords, passion perhaps not, but I know that my noble friend's commitment is outstanding on these issues. I welcome his amendment because while I support all the arguments that he made about brownfield site priority, one other important point which is sometimes overlooked is that if we give priority to brownfield site development we have a chance to improve the character of our urban areas. There is a chance to do imaginative things with housing and the rest in the middle of our urban areas.
I should declare an interest as president of the Friends of the Lake District, which also represents the CPRE in the whole of Cumbria. I am also vice-president of the Campaign for National Parks, but they are not really central, as the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, explained, to our concerns tonight. The Government have made it pretty clear, which is very reassuring, that they have a commitment which they fully intend to honour to the national parks and the areas of outstanding natural beauty. That is a terrific undertaking from the Government and we look forward to seeing them fulfil it not only in the detail but in the spirit.
The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, recaptured history very well. I was just entering my teens when the new planning legislation became operative. As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, knows very well, I was born in what was then Surrey on the edge of London and grew up in that area. I remember the concern among my family and many others as we saw many of the rich rural areas of Surrey near London being eroded by road building, ribbon development, new housing and the rest. It was a great sense of relief when this legislation came in. Some beautiful parts of the county of Surrey were preserved very near to London.
I know how important that was to me in my upbringing because as an active Boy Scout and keen walker I was always out in those areas, and so were many other people. Of course, these areas of beauty and of rich natural inheritance near to our urban centres are of special importance. It would be unforgivable if we were to let those slip and let further erosion develop.
We must remember something else. This idea about planning and the preservation of the countryside did not just come out of an elitist brain: it was something forged strongly in the context of the Second World War. We were fighting for the survival of Britain and we wanted Britain to be a decent place. We wanted it to be a better place and we could see that the countryside was central to that. If we are not careful we will lose that commitment, of which the noble Lord himself gave good evidence—passionate commitment in the best sense—to quality in our society.
The noble Lord kept stressing the inherent importance of the countryside—its inherent natural beauty being worth preserving in itself. Of course I go along with him 100 per cent on that argument, but it is not just about that. It is about our people. We had had the war and hard economic times before the war and people could see the importance of the countryside to those from urban areas as something to which we should all pay attention. Pressures may be different in character now but they are strong. People are under tremendous stress in urban existence. The economic pressures are increasingly acute, and therefore all those arguments about space and the opportunity to regenerate, to be recreative and to improve one's physique by enjoying and participating in the opportunities of the countryside remain at least as important as they have ever been. That is crucial and I was reassured to hear the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, saying what he said, because across the House and across the political divide I think there is a great deal of agreement about quality and not just quantity.
For these reasons, as the noble Lord spelled out so well, I hope we can get an absolute undertaking from the Minister tonight that the Government will preserve their commitment to the countryside as something very rich and relevant to the needs of the British people—something beautiful to preserve in itself, but also something that is indispensable in terms of the psychological and physical health of the British people.
I just hope we do not allow the arguments of growth in its economic dimension alone to squeeze out the thought of spiritual growth, spiritual development and a fuller life for the British people. I congratulate the noble Lord most warmly on his amendment. I am glad to be associated with it, and I am very glad indeed that my noble friend has put down his amendment as well.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I was for 30 years a Member of Parliament for a country constituency, and for part of that time I had the honour of representing the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, so I speak with some trepidation after he has put so valuable a contribution to your Lordships' House.
Over those 30 years, I think I have spoken more often and been more concerned with the rural scene than most politicians. Sadly, very few of our constituencies are now rural enough for one to be able to say truthfully that one represents a rural area. It is one of the mistakes, in my view, of the way in which constituencies have been drawn, and of course the changes in your Lordships’ House have meant that rural society is much less well represented than it once was.
I started out with a huge amount of sympathy for the campaigns. I did not like some of the people who were behind them. Some of the newspapers that were proposing them were not newspapers that I normally felt had the better interests of society at heart. But still they were making a great deal of fuss. I did notice, though, that some of the fuss happened before the Government had actually published their document, which suggests a certain predisposition to worry about the Government.
I am not as worried as some because the first thing to recognise is that if we are going to have localism then the local plan becomes absolutely crucial. One of the things that we in Suffolk have felt over the years—I can only speak for my own much loved county—is that we know more about our county than people outside. We wanted a situation in which our local plan could represent the way in which you keep a living, working countryside, and not merely preserve it like with taxidermy. It is one of the things your Lordships might remember, and I am sure many here will understand this. There are problems in our countryside about the livelihood of ordinary people. Increasingly, villages have become middle-aged and middle class. Even in the time during which I have lived where I live—35 years—the whole population make-up has changed. There are several reasons for that, but one is that we have tended to believe that any development, excepting those villages designated by somebody else as key villages, is unacceptable. We have argued that because the country council does not want to run a school bus to a small village, but wants people to be concentrated so they can deal with them more efficiently, these small villages should not be treated properly. Indeed, many are referred to by that offensive phrase “scattered settlement”. I am happy to say that I live in one. I have never heard anybody say, “I live in a scattered settlement”. They tend to say, “I live in a village”, because that is actually where they do live, and that is what they feel it is.
Therefore, we start with huge sympathy for the Government’s view that we should have local plans. Many villages want to have a few homes, because they know that that is the only way in which they can keep their amenities and revise and revitalise the village community. It is the only way in which they can stop the community becoming an entirely one-class society. Therefore change is crucial for the life of our villages; we want a working countryside and not merely a Marie Antoinette kind of rural idyll. So I am concerned sometimes when I read descriptions of the countryside that do not understand the need for it to be workaday, and particularly do not understand that our landscape is as it is because of work. Our landscape in England is almost entirely artificial in the sense that it is created by man’s work. That is not true in the wilder parts of Wales and Scotland and some parts of northern England, but most of us live in that sort of countryside. What we love most about it is very often something that human beings have co-operated on with the Creator to make something particularly special.
Not only do we have to think about keeping the countryside workaday, or sometimes returning it to being able to be workaday, but we also have to remember that there is poverty in the countryside that is very often unnoticed. Poverty comes thatched in the countryside, and so people think that it is a bit twee. But I knew poverty in my constituency. Someone said something about that earlier on—how bad the housing was in some parts of the world, very different from East Anglia. I could take people to village housing in my former constituency where poverty was real and the housing conditions were appalling. We must not hide from ourselves the fact that we need economic development in our countryside if it is to be both real and to meet the needs of the poor and if it is not to allow the countryside to become a mere dormitory for the old and those about to retire.
In that sense, thinking about the need for growth is not inimical to the protection of the countryside. It is part of making sure that our countryside is alive. But I must say to my noble friend that she is not helped by the traditional view of the Treasury. Not to embarrass anybody, I hope I may quote the housing report by Kate Barker, who put forward the totally improper suggestion that the reason why we are short of houses is because we do not have enough land on which there is planning permission. This is absolute nonsense. Housing is entirely driven by the ability to sell the houses that you build. If it is difficult to borrow money to buy a house, builders do not build. What is more, builders are quite clever at making sure that they do not build any more than keeps the price at the sort of price that they want. I have to say that under the previous Government, builders did better than they have done under any previous Administration. The return on capital and the profits of the building companies were clearly extremely well organised. I fear that that is part of the reason why we have such very low numbers. I do not want to argue with the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, but the fact is that in most years of the previous Government the number of houses built were worse than at any time since the First World War. It was an appalling history. Some years it was 100,000, and we need 300,000 to meet the needs. The fact is that in no year of the previous Government’s administration did we build enough houses to meet the increased need for that year, leave alone get enough to make up for the 5 million that people pretended were not needed. The noble Lord, Lord Prescott, proceeded to suggest that we did not need it. Then, year by year, he, like everybody else, discovered that we did. So we have a very bad background to this, and I understand why the Government are very concerned about it.
I hope that my noble friend will not tell us that you get houses by having more planning. There are many planning permissions that are still not fulfilled, and the reason is that people do not think that they can sell the houses that are on it. So do not think that that is how we are going to get the extra houses that we need.
In this Bill it is quite clear that we have to build on brownfield sites, or at least those which are of least environmental value. The trouble is that there are some bug-filled brownfield sites which it would be a pity to build on. But we will build on those first. That is what the whole mix is supposed to do. Therefore the Minister may well say, “It’s all there”, and I agree with her. You do not need to change either the Bill or indeed the planning proposals to achieve what we want to achieve. But there is a problem in that an awful lot of people out there do think, “You need to change it”. In other words, we have a real problem of perception now, and it is therefore very important that we listen carefully to my noble friend Lord Marlesford. If he thinks that these dangers arise, then he is speaking for a wide range of people, and we have to make sure that people do not get this wrong. I personally have no concerns except the concerns that people out there have, and therefore I hope that my noble friend will be prepared to help in language, so that people really understand that the statements of the Government are carried out as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said—in practice, clearly, and without peradventure.
The example for me is an earlier one. I used to talk about the planning guidance—PPGs—when I was the Minister responsible, and I was very keen on not building on greenfield sites. I was the first person to enforce the brownfield site concept, because I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, that builders like building on flat and green fields.
I notice that the previous Government changed planning guidance to planning statements. We were already moving to the position in which people were being told what they shall do, and I therefore also understand that many people really resent the fact that others outside are telling them. We have to get this balance right. I had hope that we had got it. It is probably true that my noble friend will have to ensure that everybody knows on the face of the Bill, or at least in the planning strategy, that what we have said as a Government is actually there, and no one can object to it.
The reason I say this is very simple. I am afraid that there are a lot of people in this world who put their own profits and interests before national and local interests. They say, “Oh, that bit of land there won’t really matter, because I own it and I can make some money out of it” or “I’m only filling over there. I can do a bit on the edge there”. We need to make sure that they recognise, right from the beginning, that we are not having that.
For me, the real problem with the present situation is that I have no fears at all, when the local plans are in place, because I think localities will make the right decision. There will be a few that do not, but that is the price you pay for real democracy. There will be the odd, but the generality will in fact make the right decisions. My problem is between now and then, and it is at that point that people have a real concern that until you have the local plans in place, the presumption of sustainable development sounds as if it would allow people to do things which they ought not to do.
The Government have to assure us that that will not be the case. I think they can do so, but I hope my noble friend will understand that this is not antagonism towards the Bill, but a response to a national campaign which has a good deal of fault in it, but which has left people concerned, and it is part of the duty of government to meet those concerns.
The Lord Bishop of Wakefield
My Lords, I, too, support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. I warm very much to what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has said about the local vision. I am just over half way through Knapton by the noble Baroness, Lady Shepherd, about the village from where she came. It gives a marvellous picture of how that village developed over the 20th century and did not stand still as a preserved, romantic ruin. Equally, we all know Ronald Blythe’s book, Akenfield, which again captured the development of a village and the way in which it continued to develop, albeit that it was fictional.
I think, too, of Timothy Jenkins who has written about the village of Comberton on the edge of Cambridge. He reminds us that villages are not places that have become fossilised but that they are growing communities, which often consist of three or four different communities within the same place, including those who have lived there over the centuries and have inherited the place, those who commute from there and so on.
Having said that, I realise that there are dangers. I am sure that I am not unique in this Chamber in regularly taking Private Eye. Noble Lords will have seen a couple of weeks ago the front cover which said that the Government have concrete plans for the countryside. It is always refreshing when I arrive back in this country by air and look out over England, even if it is at Heathrow—I came back from Tanzania just two weeks ago—and think, “Gosh, isn’t it marvellous that it is so green and there is still so much countryside”. But, standing alongside that, I think of where I was brought up, which was the northern equivalent to where the noble Lord, Lord Judd, was talking about in Surrey. We need to realise that Surrey is a foreign country if you come from north London. I would not want to make any comment about it but there you are. I was brought up on the northern edge of London. It is interesting that in the London Borough of Enfield, as it became, where I was brought up, something like two-fifths of the land area was still countryside. It was, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has said, living countryside—farming and so on.
As I go back there more than 30 years later, I now see that it has become part of what I would call the A10 corridor. If you come out of London, until you get well beyond even Hertford, you do not feel that you have got out of the conurbation. That is one of the key issues that would be helped by the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. I think, too, of Newbury where my wife was brought up. I regret the fact that the by-pass on the A34 was built on the western side, which again extends that sense of urbanisation which is happening along the Thames Valley.
When one reads books such as Knapton, Akenfield or the book on Comberton, one reads about villages which still retain some sense of independence as communities. But I am worried about the urban areas which are gradually nibbling their way into the countryside. A crucial issue is what this does to those who are being brought up in cities—city children. It is extraordinary that you can go into a school in a big urban centre and find that when you talk to children about animals or plants, it is like talking in a foreign language. I think of where I am now in west Yorkshire. An interesting thing is that the bishops recently decided that we should try to be more focused. Each of us will take two or three concerns on which we concentrate. One of mine is rural issues. People often say to me, “How extraordinary to be talking about rural issues when you’re the Bishop of Wakefield”. But one of the amazing things about the diocese in which I live is that you have to drive only about a quarter of a mile in an urban area to find yourself in the countryside.
There is the symbiosis of the country and the urban. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, we no longer live in a country idyll. In one sense, everywhere in this country is urbanised. At the same time, if we are to retain that sense of balance that is so important, we need to keep an eye on the way in which urban areas gradually encroach and become bigger conurbations.
Therefore, in supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, my plea is that we make sure that, as we pursue localism, we do so in the context of the wider region and realise that we cannot see a village or an urban area in isolation. Ultimately, urbanisation has affected the whole of our country. If we do not take the two things together, we will find ourselves not being realistic in how we approach planning both locally and regionally.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I have listened to the debate and this is a very interesting amendment. I am speaking now because I can cover one of the later amendments, which I have tabled. It is relevant to this and will save a lot of time when we get to it.
This morning I went to a breakfast meeting in your Lordships’ House, where the point was made that the number of humans breathing now in the world is equal to the number of all the other humans who have ever existed. That is a stunning statement if it is true. It means that, whether we like or not, we must think about providing for more and more people all the time.
Coming from a country where land was unlimited, when I arrived in England some 50 or 60 years ago I could not get over the degree of urbanisation. Driving from one town, you were barely out of it before you got to the next. Having come from Australia, where it might be 100 miles to your nearest neighbour, it was a terrible shock to see this. However, over the years I have grown used to it.
I have tabled my amendment, which we shall come to later, because I think that there is a case for it. In this instance the planning guidance referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is very interesting. It has been very unclear recently on in-fill sites in the green belt. How do you define an in-fill site? At one time it was considered that an acre or two in the middle of what was technically green belt, but which already had houses all around it, was not a bad place to put a children’s home, a private dwelling or something else. All the infrastructure was there and you would not expand on to further land. In the past 10 years or so we have reached a point where people say that every little bit of such land is sacrosanct. There is a huge difference between the green belt and a tiny in-fill site that has been left somewhere.
My home in Oxfordshire is in a very vibrant village. We have an excellent school system and many people with young families want to move to the area but there is simply nowhere for them to live. The local planning people have looked at things and said that there are three possible sites near or in the village that could be used. None of them is available. The people who own the sites are unwilling to allow any building on them. Some people have bought these pieces of land simply to prevent anyone building on them. This is quite damaging to the community because the village is obviously getting older all the time. I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Judd. The idea of the life that he had, wandering around in open countryside, is lovely. However, it is hard to imagine our being able to go on doing that for ever if population growth continues at its current rate. What do we want to do—preserve it for a few people and prevent a lot of others having a suitable home? We have to look carefully at the pros and cons of all of this.
The amendment is good because it asks only for “due regard” to be paid. I am 100 per cent behind that because due regard and careful selection of how things are done are important. However, we must be aware of the need for more accommodation for people and that everyone should have the right to decent housing and somewhere to live. I should not want to see anything happen that would prevent that.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Gardner should discount any figures that she heard at that meeting this morning. The number of people who are dead is of the order of 100 billion, and I think that we are some way short of that in terms of the living.
My noble friend Lord Deben harked back to the days when the urban were a minority in this House. I thought that he made a rather thin case for those days and the retention of the hereditary peerage. He made a much better case for the retention of Secretaries of State in this House, and I hope that we will be able to defeat the Government’s intention to remove them over the course of this Parliament. I entirely agree with what he said and he put it much more nicely than I am going to do.
I am greatly saddened that the National Trust should have chosen story over truth. I do not think that it will do it and its reputation good over the long term. I do not accuse my noble friend Lord Marlesford of any such thing. He and I just have an honest disagreement. However, I shall start with something on which I think we probably do agree: given 1,000 or 2,000 acres of rural Hampshire, neither of us would recreate Basingstoke in it.
I very much share the feeling of my noble friend Lord Deben that the countryside is a living place and that villages and other human habitations grace it. I agree that the way that the Bill sets about making possible the revival of the countryside, breathing into it not a vast mushroom growth but a steady rate of change and development to suit the requirements of the local population, providing a natural means of life and change, is something that we should welcome. Countryside with well designed, well placed houses and other buildings in it is a more beautiful thing than thousands of acres run by barley barons on a rotation, where the most delightful thing you are likely to see is rape every 10 years and where, if you visit it as a botanist, which I do, you see a few gross weeds such as nettles and docks, a few coarse grasses, and a few scrawny annuals and crops. In botanical and any natural terms, farmers have created a desert, much of it in countryside which has no great beauty—nothing on which to rest one’s eye. It would be vastly improved by a few well placed villages and other buildings, and I do not think that we should romanticise about all our countryside being of the quality of the greatest.
Therefore, my concern is that we should not be blown off course by the misleading adventures of the National Trust and others but should concentrate on the purpose of the Bill, which is to give discretion to local communities regarding how they develop. I trust them, as does my noble friend Lord Deben. Because no speech from me would be complete if I were entirely in favour of the Government, I say that I share the concerns of my noble friend Lord Deben about the interregnum. What happens when there is no local plan? I do not think that it is desirable that that should be a space for a free-for-all.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I am just about to cancel tomorrow’s debate—if it were in my hands, I probably would—because I think that we have had it. We have had extremely thoughtful speeches on very carefully thought through amendments.
I shall start with two things. The first is to support entirely what has been said about the mischief that has been stirred up over the launch of the planning policy framework. An awful lot of the comments arrived before anyone had had an opportunity to see what it was all about, and the matter has gone from there on a steamroller to something that the Government now clearly have to pick up and deal with because there is so much misconception and misperception around that it cannot be left.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, first, I thank everybody who took part in the debate and I hope and think that it was a useful debate. It is a little awkward in a way that there is a big debate on the same subject tomorrow. Perhaps it would have been better if that had been a bit later but that is the way the cookie crumbles.
There is one lesson that this Government have increasingly to learn. Their Achilles heel is the way in which they have handled legislation. Surely there is one basic rule of politics that everybody here ought to know: in politics, perception is reality. It is all very well for my noble friend to say, as she charmingly did—perhaps with some justification—that there were some overstatements made by the National Trust particularly, and my noble friend Lord Deben made the same point. How much better would it have been if the Government, in the process of preparing their legislation, had consulted with these bodies instead of, not surprisingly, arousing huge apprehension?
I heard my right honourable friend Mr Pickles saying with triumph, “A thousand pages of planning experience drawn up over the last 60 years? Away with it! We will bring it down to 50 pages”. That was bound to make people realise that you probably could not put into 50 pages everything that was needed. It would have been a great deal better if they had sat down with people like the National Trust and CPRE before producing all these drafts. Instead, the Prime Minister had to write a letter to the National Trust, saying, “Please do not get too upset with us, we will talk to you”, and Ministers are now doing so—much better late than never.
I hope for the Government—and perhaps the usual channels on my side will convey this—that this applies not just to this Bill but to a number of others, and in future legislation I hope that they will take a little more trouble to consult and prepare the ground and show more sensitivity. I am pleased to feel, from what the Minister has just said, that the lesson has got home. I would have confidence in her and I do not have any problem in withdrawing my amendment tonight because I am sure that as the NPPF is a draft, as she said, and is susceptible to being changed, and there are discussions going on about it, we will eventually get the right answer.
However, it matters to a lot of people and there are people who will only get an impression and the impression is what matters. The Government have a lot of work to do in the next year or so to put right the impression that has been created so far. I hope that this lesson has been learned and will be applied to other Bills. I thank everybody for what they have said, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hanham
“(7AA) Subsection (7B) applies where the person appointed to carry out the examination—
(a) does not consider that, in all the circumstances, it would be reasonable to conclude that the document satisfies the requirements mentioned in subsection (5)(a) and is sound, but(b) does consider that, in all the circumstances, it would be reasonable to conclude that the local planning authority complied with any duty imposed on the authority by section 33A in relation to the document’s preparation.”